Can Zuckerberg duck deposition in Meta privacy class action?

August 18 (Reuters) -Mark Zuckerberg has better things than sitting for a deposit.

Or for meta platforms, lawyers, in a petition waiting to the 9th US Circuit Court, objected to the fact that the CEO of the CEO has to witness in a proposed class of privacy class action.

The company argues that Zuckerberg does not have a “unique” information about the case and calls for a controversial principle known as the apex doctrine to claim that Zuckerberg should get rid of the hot seat, and claims that the plaintiff’s lawyers can get the same information from lower commodity employees.

The plaintiff wants to question CEO about the allegations that Meta received private health information from millions of Facebook without information or consent through the Pixel Monitoring Tool. The allegations reiterate those who take class action by APP Flo Health users who have found that a San Francisco jury violated the California Privacy invasion law on August 1st. The damages have not yet been identified, but as I mentioned before, the total can be too large.

In June, the US regional judge in San Francisco agreed with the US Judge Judge Virginia Demarchi, the US Judge Judge Virginia Demarchi, and gave the plaintiffs a green light to transfer Zuckerberg. However, the judge limited the session to a maximum of three hours and narrowed the scope of the questions that allowed Zuckerberg’s role as a final decision -maker on a confidentiality issues of a Rıza Decree, which entered with the FLETAL Trade Commission, which includes FLO application.

A commodity spokesman did not respond to the request for comments. The company in the court newspapers refused to do wrong in both cases.

The lawyers of the plaintiffs from Gibbs Mura refused to comment for this column.

In July, the Defense Lawyer from Latham & Watkins and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher asked for a Mandamus letter from the 9th Circuit and called it a “critical important first impression issue” for San Francisco -based court.

The plaintiff’s lawyers say that Mandamus is a “harsh and extraordinary demand, and argues that the court court does not allow a clear mistake to justify such a relaxation.

However, the defense lawyer says there is a greater problem than to accumulate a one -time. They wrote that billions of dollars of dollars, such as Meta, have faced lawsuits and that their leaders have uniquely important and challenging work duties and limited time. ” This is especially called to testimony.

Meta lawyers said that the regional courts in the 9th circuit were “deeply divided” about exactly when and how to apply the apex doctrine.

Indeed, in cases including companies including companies including Microsoft, Tesla, Uber and Alphabet, the process of disabling CEOs within the 9th circuit has emerged regularly. In some cases, the managers left the hook, and others were forced to sit for deposits.

Meta lawyers may be more harassed than such a legitimate need, meta lawyers claim that the accumulation expression is right if the manager has unique, first -hand information that cannot be taken anywhere else.

Here, the proposal to dismiss Zuckerberg is that they are a maneuver to increase the burden of this case and to obtain perceived leverage ”.

The lawyers of the plaintiffs allow the state and federal rules to object to demands for the statements of the court -suicide witnesses. Gibbs Mura’dan lawyers, “for the company managers only for the sector managers should not be a special distribution of civilian discovery”; Simmons Hanly Conroy; Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; The Kiel Law; and Terrell Marshall Law Group.

My Reuters colleague Jonathan Stempel, the underlying case began in 2022 when it was allegedly violating Meta’s Federal Television Law and a California Law of privacy.

According to the complaint, Meta Pixel, an internet analysis tool that Meta has made us -usable for website developers, has allowed users to earn money from the targeted ads when they log in to the patient portals where they are installed.

META in the court documents, some health service providers allegedly abused Pixel allegedly “Meta’s provider on the websites that the public is not a public tool” should not be held responsible, he said.

The plaintiff’s lawyers justify their demands to question Zuckerberg and argue that they were involved in the case from the beginning. “Meta had personal knowledge about the intention of getting this information,” they say, “And he played a key role in Meta’s sensitive health data collection.”

The Court of Appeal did not specify when to manage the petition, but the Meta Lawyers Regional Court reported that Palo Alto could proceed at Palo Alto this month if he rejected the 9th circuit Mandamus petition until August 21st.

(Reporting by Jenna Greene)