A US judge ordered Facebook to give shareholders emails and other records concerning how the social media company handles data privacy, after data for 87 million users was accessed by the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
In a 57-page decision on Thursday, which followed a one-day trial in March, Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights of the Delaware Chancery Court said shareholders demonstrated a "credible basis" to believe Facebook board members may have committed wrongdoing related to data privacy breaches.
Slights noted that Facebook had at the time of the 2015 Cambridge Analytica breach been subject to a US Federal Trade Commission consent decree that required it to bolster its data security measures. The breach was not revealed until March 2018.
"Evidence presented at trial provides a credible basis to infer the board and Facebook senior executives failed to oversee Facebook's compliance with the consent decree and its broader efforts to protect the private data of its users," Slights wrote.