In late October 2026, a New Mexico judge entered a $25‑billion penalty against Meta after a jury found nearly 44 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law, including a decade-long pattern of deceptive claims about the company’s privacy and data practices. The case arose from the Cambridge Analytica controversy and included claims that Meta misrepresented its investigation of data misuse in the scandal’s wake. This first article in a two-part series provides perspective on the litigation tactics and standout trial aspects leading to the milestone verdict, with comments from the New Mexico AG’s outside counsel and Lowenstein partner Katherine McGee. Part two will provide governance lessons from the case for a broad set of organizations in an AI era. See “Google Verdict Expands Privacy Rights to Anonymized Data” (Oct. 1, 2025).