A judge Tuesday dismissed motions by the District Attorney General of the District of Columbia to name Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, as a defendant in a privacy lawsuit.
DC Superior Court Judge Maurice A. Ross said at a hearing that Washington Attorney General Karl Racine had waited too long to try to modify their lawsuit to name Mr. wanted to hold personally responsible.
“The problem I have with this is you’re waiting three years,” Judge Ross said, referring to Mr Zuckerberg’s addition to the case first brought in 2018. “What value does it bring to name it? There is no more relief for the consumers of the District.”
Judge Ross also opposed a demand from Mr. Racine to impeach Mr. Zuckerberg from the trial.
Mr. Racine’s complaint against Facebook was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in December 2018. The lawsuit accuses Facebook of misleading consumers about privacy on the platform by allowing Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, to obtain sensitive data from more than 87 million users, including more than half of the district’s residents.
Mr. Racine attempted to add Mr. Zuckerberg as a defendant in October and said he wanted to send a message to all company leaders that they could be responsible for harming consumers. Mr. Zuckerberg, by being named in the lawsuit, could have been exposed to financial and other sanctions.
Facebook is at the center of multiple legal battles with regulators. It is the target of antitrust and consumer protection lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and several prosecutors.
The office of Meta and Mr. Racine declined to comment.