This is absolutely right. The worst case scenario in these situations is a settlement with no admission of fault.

I think even this isn't as hurtful to major shareholders - the ones that have decisionmaking power - as you'd hope. They typically have more information and pay more attention than the small fish. They'd offload their shares earlier, for longer, as to not disturb the price too much, leaving the remainder to hold the bag once shit hits the fan. The stock market enables that. They've extracted a shit ton of money by steering the company over the last couple of decades. The ones that would really bear the brunt are the shareholders that never had any decisionmaking power, and the company's workers.

Or when they’re foreign companies.

Oh I'm sure their Legal team will get QA people to do a full audit trail to find out who was on shift at the assembly line and blame them.

Couple of rogue engineers.

Oliver Schmidt was a senior executive at VW who was prosecuted for that. Yes, upper management did take a hit.