Attorneys representing shareholders of Meta sought sanctions on Monday from a judge in Delaware against the company’s former Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and current White House Chief of Staff, Jeff Zients. They are accused of deleting emails linked to the Cambridge Analytica privacy controversy despite having been instructed to maintain such records.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs assert that both Sandberg and Zients communicated about critical aspects concerning a 2018 shareholder lawsuit using their personal email accounts. This lawsuit claims that Facebook’s executive team neglected their legal and fiduciary responsibilities by failing to safeguard user privacy over an extended period.

According to the court filings, Sandberg and Zients disregarded a litigation hold mandating the preservation of documents, as they “knowingly and permanently destroyed electronically stored information” from these personal accounts. The plaintiffs maintained that the former board members acted either “recklessly or intentionally” in erasing documents, highlighting that Sandberg deleted her Gmail communications after just 30 days, irrespective of the litigation warning. Meanwhile, Zients did not deactivate an auto-delete feature in his email account, even though he received a similar litigation hold and consulted legal advisors.

The plaintiffs argue that Sandberg and Zients should not be allowed to testify regarding any information exchanged via their personal emails. They further argue that any affirmative defenses they may present should require them to meet a “clear and convincing evidence” standard rather than the lower “preponderance” of the evidence standard.

Recently, Sandberg was deposed, and attorney Max Huffman mentioned that Zients is scheduled for deposition in February due to his current commitments in Washington.

Defending the actions, attorney Berton Ashman characterized the email deletions as “unfortunate” but insisted that the plaintiffs have not demonstrated any prejudice resulting from these actions. He argued before Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster that there was no intention to eliminate important information and that there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Ashman claimed that the majority of the emails sent from and to Sandberg and Zients using their personal accounts were also received by other individuals at Facebook. He suggested that any potentially missing emails were available to the plaintiffs through other sources within the company.

Huffman countered Ashman’s defense, stating that Sandberg should not be given the “benefit of the doubt” regarding her control over what information was retained or deleted.

Vice Chancellor Laster, who is set to oversee a non-jury trial in April, expressed his desire to review a transcript of Sandberg’s deposition before making any decisions on the request for sanctions.

Last year, the judge dismissed a motion to throw out the lawsuit based on the plaintiffs not first asking Facebook’s board to take legal action. The judge sided with the plaintiffs, asserting that such a request would have been pointless given concerns about whether the majority of the board, many with close ties to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, would challenge him over the company’s privacy issues.

Laster also emphasized that his prior decisions required him to view the allegations made in the complaint as factual.

The lawsuit accuses Facebook officials of consistently violating a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission, which mandated that the company cease gathering and sharing personal data without user consent. Allegations arose that Facebook sold user data to business partners and removed necessary disclosures from privacy settings, thus breaching the consent order. This led to hefty fines from European regulators and culminated in the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein a British political consulting firm obtained personal information belonging to millions of Facebook users through a third-party app.

As a result of these actions, Facebook agreed to a historic $5 billion settlement to resolve FTC allegations that it misled users regarding their control over personal data.