You may have heard about Meta's $17.1 billion settlement with various school districts and Native American tribes who claimed that Meta knowingly hooked children on social media. The "Perry Mason moment" precipitating this settlement was the trial judge's order to unseal a document that was partially redacted to obscure attorney-client privileged material. This revealed information that damaged Meta's case and, more importantly, it showed that Meta's attorneys improperly over-redacted under a privilege fig leaf. In other words Meta's craven lawyers lied that stuff was privileged in order to hide it from the other side. You can't do that.
The judge appointed a special master to review all of Meta's privilege designations and along the way they learned that Instagram's legal team signed off on company swag hats embroidered with "a/c priv." You can't make this up.
These fools are so crooked and so hubristic that they hubristically thought they could tout their crookedness! But like a tragic Greek figure, their hubris did them in. The judicial fallout isn't complete yet but I expect a hell of a bench slap on this.
None of this would've happened if these jackals watched The Wire. If you do something bad, don't leave a paper trail. Or an embroidery trail.
love a good bench slap
ReplyDeleteZ - would be interested in your thoughts on what an appropriate bench slap looks like. Financial sanctions will be meaningless to Meta. Actions against the legal minions who did the review and implemented the a/c priv strategy will also change nothing.
ReplyDeleteWould you seek disciplinary action/disbarrment of the Meta GC for failure to supervise?
Also, in an effort to set Rob off, I’ll note that Meta’s new GC as of this year (coming over from MSFT) was part of the 1st Trump administration, replacing the old Meta (now Apple GC) who was also part of the 1st Trump administration. Both are Harvard undergrad/Yale JD.
ReplyDeleteIncestuous little circle jerk of fuckery.
i'm so inured to that sort of fuckery. i've moved on being set off by wondering what happens when the executive branch openly disdains a court order issued by a federal judge.
ReplyDeletewhat do the notes of cliffy say about how this dough is divvied out and to whom? signed - lazy and short on time
ReplyDeleteoddly, a lot of the cash seems to allocated to bald ceo-types from northern florida.
ReplyDeleteMarls, there has to be some deterrent to prevent other assholes from doing this. The courts aren't set up to form a consent decree or a CIA and I'm not sure this DOJ will go after Meta to get one so I think there has to be a big financial sanction. Even if that's nothing to Meta it might be a meaningful deterrent to a smaller company. Referrals (very strongly!) to all the attorneys' state bar associations have to happen as well to also deter other assholes. By "all the attorneys" I mean the folks who over-designated, those who knew about the over-designation, the GC, the chief compliance officer, any compliance officers and/or product counsel responsible for that product/team, and maybe outside counsel for not being diligent in their review. It has to be broad.
ReplyDeleteI won’t hold my breath
ReplyDeleteYou’ll want to have your mouth open for that kind of broad.
ReplyDeleteI don’t understand Dems continuing to push for a war powers resolution to have Trump withdraw troops in Iran. Why don’t they introduce a resolution to declare war and get everyone on record as for or against? Wouldn’t that accomplish about the same thing (nothing) while saying more? Just feels like they are playing checkers instead of chess.
ReplyDelete