Justice was not done in the case of Purdue. The Sackler family absconded with billions. They still need to be held to account.
I think the only proper fix would be to disallow companies from going bankrupt - ie. if a company has unpaid debts, the shareholders must pay them, and the share price can become negative. That forces everyone to build such risks into their models from the start, and company directors will be discouraged from taking such risky bets.
Other similar financial instruments exist - like stock shorts, futures contracts, lloyds names, etc.
Then if the remaining investors pay the debts, they've also lost all the money they invested.
Where do you draw the line for investors responsible? Anyone who's still in? Whoever was ever in?
If there is damage when you take it over, you better ask the person you're taking over the lease from to pay for it, cos else it's gonna be blamed on you and you'll have to pay for it...
The same translates to buying shares with my proposal - you better inspect what you're taking on, because there might be costs associated.
We saw last week how bad it is to hold excessively large short positions. This proposal would effectively make long positions have unlimited downside risk as well. I think it would have extremely deleterious effects on investment and the bad actors would still find ways to avoid the downside by leaving other shareholders holding "the bag."
(Not an argument, just an observation)