It is doubtful that this will happen due to the devastating effects it would cause to shareholders who bought in good faith (precedents here), but it is possible.
How "devastating" will it be for most? That seems to me to be a problem, or potential problem, specific to penny stocks. Let's say a dividend was incorrectly paid by an exchange listed company, and the company decided to rescind it. Its shareholders would be for the most part investors; they wouldn't be trading in and out of issues on a short term basis, and their portfolios would be suitably diversified.
Recission of the dividend would not be devastating to such shareholders. First, though the exchange listed company would have made a mistake, it wouldn't just disappear, as CRGP did. Its stock price might take a hit as a consequence of the company's incompetence, but it would likely recover in time. Naturally, if one of the shareholders had withdrawn the amount of his dividend--say it was $15,000--to pay bills, upon reversal of the divvy he'd have either to redeposit that amount in cash, or sell other holdings. Since he'd be diversified, that wouldn't be a major problem. He wouldn't enjoy having to do that, but his bills would still be paid, and most of his portfolio would still be intact. Effectively, he'd have returned to the status quo ante: things would be as they were before the dividend was paid.
Similar scenarios play out every day. People do get margin calls. They get them because they made unwise decisions. And they have to pay up. But most of the time they aren't devastated. And when they are, well, they made unwise decisions.
So how will the judge feel about CRGP shareholders whose central argument is that they didn't know enough to do thorough research before buying, and who, in some cases, put all or most of their eggs in the CRGP basket? Those were unwise decisions.
