Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s day of reckoning will likely be this week.
That’s when Judge Chhabria is expected to decide not only (1) whether the crime-fraud exception applies to 63 Meta documents warranting the loss of confidentiality in Meta’s attorney-client communications, but also (2) what to do about Meta’s admission on late Friday that it belatedly discovered a tranche of 18,000 Meta documents that were supposedly missed in their e-discovery review inadvertently due to their (unnamed) e-discovery vendor.
And, if you’re wondering what possible crime Meta may have been engaged in, Judge Chhabria ruled that plaintiffs made a prima facie showing of possible criminal copyright infringement under Section 506(a)(1) of the Copyright Act.
In their reply to Meta counsel’s letters, the Kadrey plaintiffs, represented by the David Boies’ law firm, accuses Meta of having made false representations (in the past, Meta allegedly stated that Meta needed 2 weeks to conduct its document review, but now states that it can review the 18,000 documents within 1 week).
The Kadrey plaintiffs also blast Meta for its “massive discovery failure” of missing 18,000 documents for review. “This unreviewed “tranche” of 18,000 documents is over one third the size of all documents that Meta produced in this case (about 45,000) and is even larger than the total number of documents Meta produced when it first claimed ‘substantial completion’ in July 2024.”
The plaintiffs’ attorney even quotes from a prior case in which Judge Chhabria issued sanctions on Meta (Facebook then) for discovery abuses, even quoting the Judge: “All the while, Facebook and [its outside counsel] had the audacity to accuse the plaintiffs’ lawyers of delaying the case, and to assert that the plaintiffs’ reasonable efforts to obtain obviously relevant discovery were frivolous. It’s almost as if Facebook and [its counsel] spent the better part of three years trying to gaslight their opponents, not to mention the Court.” Ouch.
We highlighted the plaintiffs’ letter below to point out their strong criticisms of Meta.