Sometimes, when a company's stock price drops precipitously, lawyer(s) launch lawsuits on behalf of shareholders.
This is common practice. I don't know if this is a scam for lawyers to get more billable hours or a negotiation for a private buy back of shares at higher-than-market prices from high net worth investors. It's extortion and racketeering done by criminals with J.D. degrees.
Like I said in my OP, "for quite a while". I could have said, "for decades," since I've seen it since at least the early 80s, a long-former employer having been hit with one ca. 1982 or 1983. I don't recall whether the suit was frivolous or merely weak, nor the outcome. Fast-growing new tech companies are frequent targets, as upper manglers tend to focus on promoting and growing the company and be less than careful in what they say and where.
IMO, in the Bud Light case, it would not take a marketing genius to realize that making a political point in an ad campaign would hurt the company, possibly very badly. Having done so it the face of common sense is a clear failure of manglement's fiduciary duty to shareholders. And, for that matter, to licensed distributors, depending on their contracts.
