Yes I realize it's a unit construction with gears that can shear oil.
But look at the available oils and their specs, you want to talk tribology?
Here's some facts 15w-40 is out of spec for this engine. Period it makes even less sense to use that oil so people shouldn't even be pushing this as the "best" oil for this engine.
So what are your other choices? 10w-40 (still out of spec) and 10w-30. Which oil do you think will suffer more shear? It takes more viscosity index improver to make 10w-40 than to make 10w-30. So in essence that 10w-40 will shear down pretty quickly to 10w-30 which is pretty stable as an oil which is why it continues its popularity. 10w-30 doesn't tend to shear down to 10w-20 unless you're running it in some extreme pressure hypoid gearbox of some sort, not happening in this engine/gearbox. So even the shared sump doesn't make a bit of difference in the logic of trying to use a thicker oil.
As for HDEO oil, use it if you want, but even though people claim the phosphate is not a problem at high ZDDP levels, it still will reduce the effectiveness of the cat long term, you don't need to consume tons of oil to see a reduction in effectiveness. Long term it happens and the more ZDDP the more it compromises the effectiveness. I don't plan on pulling the cat changing the exhaust and tuning blubbering rich. So I'd rather have a well working smog system to help keep the bike clean because I like clean air and don't want to contribute to pollution if I can help it. You may think it's no big deal, but it's a hypocritical position to hold to say screw the cat if you also recycle your oil and poo poo those who dump it down the drain.
Not to mention Honda has approved API SG AND higher, so I'm still good and above a certain threshold extra ZDDP doesn't significantly improve wear. So keep your oil changed within specs and wear ought to be minimal with the added benefit of minimal risk to the cat.
As for putting on a new filter, Honda would not go through so much trouble to try and prove an oil filter is new or not and it wouldn't matter anyways, if it was new what's to say it wasn't just recently changed and the engine failed because of another unrelated problem, especially since the oil filter is almost positively not going to be the point of failure. Unless the engine can be proven to have failed specifically because of the oil filter it wouldn't matter one bit and again using Honda car oil filters is common practice and has yet to result in engine failures among the bikes that use them, ie CBR's, Goldwings, VTX.
In fact those stupid show chrome after market filters come in the same size and likely aren't even built to as good a spec as the car filters which do work and have a properly set bypass valve that's the same as the motorcycle ones. I've taken apart Honda motorcycle filters and car filters, measured the orifice area and measured spring tension. Same pressure between the two of about 12 psi when you calculate it out.