Not sure which type of "server" you meant when you said that, is that in the narrow sense of database server?

Behaviors similar to the above are not that infrequent, are expected from many other servers-in-wide-sense: media decoder would drop all decoding in progress and try to resynch to the next access unit, a communication front-end device would reset parts of itself and start re-acquiring channels (such exception-like reaction is even specified in some comm standards). Network processor would drop the packet and "fast-forward" to the next. Etc.

You could argue that this still looks like a server behavior loosely defined (and I agree), but a) this makes application field for exceptions large enough IMO, and especially b) how differently could one implement all that with other mechanisms (like return codes), and for what benefits?