A giant thumbs-up button marks the entrance to the Facebook Inc. campus, located at 1601 Willow Road in Menlo Park. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM

Facebook Inc. has asked a federal judge in California to dismiss a shareholder derivative suit that targets the company's directors over their alleged mishandling of users' private data, arguing that the case proceed alongside a similar dispute in Delaware Court of Chancery.

In a court filing Aug. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Facebook's Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher attorneys said that a clause in the company's charter designated the Delaware business court as the “sole and exclusive forum” for litigating derivative cases against members of the board.

“For this reason, this derivative action should be dismissed on forum non conveniens grounds,” Facebook said in a motion, signed by Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder. “If plaintiffs wish to litigate this derivative lawsuit, they are required under the company's exclusive forum provision to do so in the Delaware Court of Chancery, where a parallel shareholder derivative lawsuit arising out of the same allegations and against the same defendants as this case is pending.”

According to the motion, the Facebook directors are already facing a “virtually identical” lawsuit in the First State, where investors have argued that the board failed to prevent misuse of private user data by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Another shareholder is seeking access to corporate documents in a separate Chancery Court lawsuit accusing the board of violations in responding to the crisis, in which Cambridge Analytica gained access to the information of 87 million Facebook users.

Cambridge Analytica, which has been named with Facebook as a defendant in multidistrict litigation, has since filed for bankruptcy in the United States, and its parent has begun dissolution proceedings in the United Kingdom.

Snyder said in Aug. 10's filing that Facebook's forum selection clause was valid and that the plaintiffs could not point to a compelling reason for proceeding in California.

“If anything, enforcing the exclusive forum provision would further public policy considerations by helping to avoid inefficient multi-forum derivative litigation and the risk of conflicting rulings on the same or similar issues,” he wrote.

An attorney for the plaintiffs was not immediately available to comment on Monday. The plaintiffs are represented by Mark C. Molumphy, Joseph W. Cotchett, Brian Danitz, Gina Stassi and Stephanie Biehl of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.

Facebook has acknowledged that Cambridge Analytica accessed data from millions of its users as part of a software application called “thisisyourdigitallife.” Questions have surfaced over the use of such data during the 2016 election, given that Steve Bannon, who was campaign manager and later a top White House strategist for President Donald Trump, provided financial backing to Cambridge Analytica.

In April, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, said the company knew Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained user data, but failed to conduct a review of the breaches for more than two years.

Recent media reports, however, have indicated that Facebook struck customized deals with a range of electronics firms, contradicting the company's assurances that it had restricted access to user data in 2015.

In June, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation combined more than 30 class actions brought against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica into an MDL in the Northern District of California.

Meanwhile, the company has also been struggling with lower-than-expected profit margins after years of steady growth. Last month, in the largest single-day decline in the company's history, the company lost $120 billion in market value on news that growth in digital advertising has begun to slow.

The California derivative case, captioned In re: Facebook Shareholder Derivative Privacy Litigation, has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr for the Northern District of California.