Meta ex-COO Sheryl Sandberg sanctioned in investor lawsuit for deleting emails

Meta Platforms’ former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was sanctioned by a judge on Tuesday.

Meta Platforms' former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was sanctioned by a judge on Tuesday for deleting emails related to litigation over Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, despite being told to preserve the messages.

The judge, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, of Delaware Chancery Court, said evidence showed Sandberg used a personal account under a pseudonym and erased messages that were likely relevant to the shareholder lawsuit.

The sanction will make it harder for Sandberg to tell her side of the story and avoid liability at the eight-day, non-jury trial scheduled for April. The judge also ordered her to pay the expenses related to the sanctions motion incurred by the shareholders, which include California's huge teachers' retirement system known as CalSTRS.

"Because Sandberg selectively deleted items from her Gmail account, it is likely that the most sensitive and probative exchanges are gone," Laster wrote in his opinion published on Tuesday.

Meta and an attorney for Sandberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sandberg had argued she was forthcoming about the personal account and rarely used it for business and when she did, others were copied on the messages so the information was preserved.

Laster imposed a higher standard of "clear and convincing evidence," rather than "preponderance" of evidence, for Sandberg's affirmative defences, which are her arguments and evidence for why she should not be held liable.