Robbins Geller Wins Appeal for Meta Investors

On October 18, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of a securities fraud case against Meta (formerly Facebook) alleging the company and certain of its executives made false and misleading statements to investors regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal. 

Following 2018 revelations that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested and kept personal data from millions of Facebook users without their knowledge or consent, Facebook reassured the public that its users controlled all of their personal data. Shortly after, however, news broke about Facebook’s widespread practice of sharing user data with third-party apps without users’ consent. Investors filed a securities fraud lawsuit alleging that false and misleading statements about Facebook’s data practices caused Facebook stock to trade at an artificially inflated price. After the Cambridge Analytica disclosures and subsequent revelations, the stock price dropped, damaging investors.

In its opinion reinstating the Facebook case, the Ninth Circuit relied upon precedent set by In re Alphabet, Inc. Securities Litigation, another Robbins Geller appellate reversal of a securities fraud dismissal, in recognizing that falsity allegations are “sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss when the complaint plausibly alleged that a company’s SEC filings warned that risks ‘could’ occur when, in fact, those risks had already materialized.”

The Facebook case was remanded to the district court for further proceedings.

About Robbins Geller

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is one of the world’s leading complex litigation firms, representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, shareholder derivative, antitrust, corporate takeover, and consumer fraud and privacy cases. With 200 lawyers in 10 offices, Robbins Geller is one of the world’s largest plaintiffs’ firms, and the Firm’s attorneys have obtained many of the largest securities, antitrust, and consumer class action recoveries in history.

The Firm is ranked #1 on the most recent ISS Securities Class Action Services Top 50 Report for recovering more than $1.75 billion for investors in 2022 — the third year in a row Robbins Geller tops the list. And in those three years alone, Robbins Geller recovered nearly $5.3 billion for investors, more than double the amount recovered by any other plaintiffs’ firm. The Firm secured the largest-ever securities fraud class action settlement — $7.2 billion — in In re Enron Corp. Securities Litigation.

For media inquiries, please contact media@rgrdlaw.com or call (619) 338-3821.

In re Facebook, Inc. Securities Litigation, 2023 WL 6857600 (9th Cir. Oct. 18, 2023).