Thank you for the insight. It is one thing what holds in theory, and quite another what happens in reality, as you point out.
It is actually quite common.
Here is a list of hundreds of such open lawsuits:
Yes, shareholder lawsuits are common. But it's the company that pays, not directors.
HP actually paid $100 million in such a lawsuit for the Apotheker/Autonomy flop:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hp-classaction-pggm/hp-pay...
The 2010 Board of Directors who created and permitted the $8.8 billion loss paid nothing. They kept their compensation, and most stayed on the board.
The greatest example of board negligence in this industry (that I can think of) in recent years would be when Hewlett-Packard's board hired Léo Apotheker as CEO in 2010. The board members had never met the man and his career had been on a different continent, yet they didn't even interview him in person before giving him the job!
Apotheker spent $10.2 billion to buy a British company named Autonomy. Soon after he was fired. Only a year later, HP was forced to write down $8.8 billion of Autonomy's purchase price.
That enormous loss was directly the fault of HP's board for hiring such a terrible CEO and letting him do the terrible deal. But shareholders didn't have any recourse; the best they could do is vote on a new board.