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.
Here is a list of hundreds of such open lawsuits:
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.
https://www.delawarelitigation.com/2012/07/articles/chancery...