Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s billionaire board members have been spared from testifying after clinching a settlement with Meta shareholders in an $8 billion lawsuit over privacy violations, a lawyer for the shareholders said Thursday.

The suit attempted to hold current and former employees of Meta, as well as top boss Zuckerberg, liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs over data protection failures.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

The deal came in the nick of time for billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who was scheduled to testify on Thursday concerning his role as a Meta director.

Ex-Facebook board members Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, were also expected to provide testimony.

Zuckerberg was scheduled to take the stand on Monday, with Sandberg to follow on Wednesday. The trial was expected to run through the end of next week.

Meta declined to comment.

The suit largely concerned a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, which alleged Facebook failed to comply with a 2012 agreement to protect users’ data.

Meta shareholders blamed former and current board members for failing to comply with the 2012 agreement – claiming that Zuckerberg and Sandberg were knowingly running Facebook as an illicit data harvesting operation, according to the lawsuit.

The defendants staunchly denied these allegations, which they called “extreme.”

Facebook was slapped with the multi-billion dollar fine – which, at the time, was a record – after it was discovered that data from millions of Facebook users had been tapped by Cambridge Analytica.

The since-defunct political consulting firm worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

An expert witness for the plaintiffs on Wednesday testified about “gaps and weaknesses” in Facebook’s privacy policies, but would not say whether the company explicitly violated the 2012 agreement.

Shareholders alleged that Facebook had agreed to pay the $5 million fine to spare Zuckerberg from legal proceedings – and potentially from being found liable for the privacy violations.

Ex-board member Jeffrey Zients, who served as former President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, testified that the company did not agree to the fine simply to spare Zuckerberg.

Meta has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting data privacy since 2019, according to its website.

Thursday’s settlement has once again saved Zuckerberg from taking the stand.

In 2017, he was expected to testify at a trial over a lawsuit by investors against his plan to issue Facebook stock that would have extended his grip on the company, but that case was also settled.

With Wires