We assemble and describe a sample of 174,782 lawsuits filed against 218,437 public‐company lawsuit‐defendants in federal district court from 2006 to 2021. These lawsuits involve an array of allegations, including product liability, civil rights discrimination, contract breaches, improper compensation and labor practices, antitrust violations, corruption, securities violations, pollution, and intellectual property infringement. The sample exhibits rich variation across firms, industries, time, suit type, plaintiffs, and outcomes—reflecting not only firm activities but also social, political, and regulatory trends. Although many claims matter very little, some are important individually or in aggregate. We observe 23% of defendants experience a market value decline exceeding 10% of current assets around the lawsuit filing. Consistent with the notion that even low‐stakes claims, when numerous or persistent, can introduce frictions or reflect underlying issues, we find that aggregate legal exposure is associated with increased return volatility and decreased profitability. Subsequent tests indicate that materiality, public and private enforcement, and firms’ information environments (as well as other firm traits) are associated with managers’ decisions to disclose these claims. Collectively, our descriptive evidence establishes a foundation for further research into underexplored types of corporate litigation that represent a broad range of alleged wrongdoing and socially irresponsible behavior.

We find that banking relationships built through institutional cross‐ownership influence the granting of loans as well as loan contract terms. Firms that are newly added to institutional cross‐owners' portfolios are more likely to borrow from banks that previously issued loans to other firms within the same portfolio. These related banks charge lower loan interest spreads and offer greater loan amounts than other banks issuing loans to the same borrower. However, such loans also are more likely to include capital covenants in the presence of high shareholder–debtholder conflicts. Thus, lenders appear to value the benefits of common institutional ownership while still protecting themselves against potential risk shifting. The interest spread effect is stronger for borrowers with high information asymmetry, low accounting quality, more financial distress risk, and dedicated institutional common owners. These results are consistent with either direct information flows or indirect signaling effects and are robust to different fixed effects specifications as well as to an identification strategy that exploits common ownership stemming from financial institution mergers. Overall, our study provides evidence that investor networks play a beneficial role in the production and dissemination of contracting‐relevant information and highlights cross‐ownership as a favorable determinant for contracting efficiency beyond traditional accounting measures.