*

Settlement details undisclosed, trial adjourned

*

Shareholders sought $8 billion for privacy violations

*

FTC fined company $5 billion in 2019

*

(Updates with background on case and prior day's testimony from

paragraph four)

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Delaware, July 17 (Reuters) - Mark

Zuckerberg and current and former directors and officers of Meta

Platforms ( META ) agreed on Thursday to settle claims seeking

$8 billion for the damage they allegedly caused the company by

allowing repeated violations of Facebook users' privacy, a

lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday.

The parties did not disclose details of the settlement and

defense lawyers did not address the judge, Kathaleen McCormick

of the Delaware Court of Chancery. McCormick adjourned the trial

just as it was to enter its second day and she congratulated the

parties.

The plaintiffs' lawyer, Sam Closic, said the agreement just

came together quickly.

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who is a

defendant in the trial and a Meta director, was scheduled to

testify on Thursday.

Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other

former company officials including former Chief Operating

Officer Sheryl Sandberg in hopes of holding them liable for

billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in

recent years.

The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in

2019 after finding that it failed to comply with a 2012

agreement with the regulator to protect users' data.

Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand on Monday and

Sandberg on Wednesday. The trial was scheduled to run through

the end of next week.

The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants to use their

personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants denied

the allegations, which they called "extreme claims."

Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. The company is

not a defendant.

The case was also expected to include testimony from former

Facebook board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies ( PLTR )

co-founder, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix ( NFLX )

.

Meta investors alleged in the lawsuit that former and

current board members completely failed to oversee the company's

compliance with the 2012 FTC agreement and claim that Zuckerberg

and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg knowingly ran

Facebook as an illegal data harvesting operation.

The case followed revelations that data from millions of

Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a

now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald

Trump's successful U.S. presidential campaign in 2016. Those

revelations led to the FTC fine, which was a record at the time.

On Wednesday, an expert witness for the plaintiffs testified

about what he called "gaps and weaknesses" in Facebook's privacy

policies but would not say if the company violated the 2012

agreement that Facebook reached with the FTC.

Jeffrey Zients, a former board member, testified on

Wednesday that the company did not agree to the FTC fine to

spare Zuckerberg legal liability, as shareholders allege.

On its website, the company has said it has invested

billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019.