Companies get accused of issues and even deliberate wrongdoing every so often. Sometimes the allegations are correct due to production or other issues, often they are blown out of proportion, and sometimes they are outright false. In any case the situation is difficult for the CEO to negotiate. In the early 80’s Audi had a sudden acceleration issue. Nobody could ever confirm that there was an issue no matter how hard everybody searched. The company decided to fight the resulting lawsuits and won every single one of them. But in the process their cars lost value and the company lost almost all its market share. What should the CEO have done? Was fighting the suits in court the right approach?
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