False or misleading disclosures could be a basis of a suit.

If Judge Rosenthal finds that Nabors made inadequate or misleading disclosures, he could delay the move temporarily and order additional hearings.

In the Daiwa case, Federal prosecutors said Mr. Iguchi and Daiwa executives made "incomplete and misleading disclosures to the Federal Reserve Board and its examiners."

The documents also said that Mr. Iguchi and other senior managers made "incomplete and misleading disclosures to the Federal Reserve Board and its examiners" in November 1993 about trading activities.

Warnaco did not correct the misleading disclosure until May 16, 2000, when it submitted an amended 1998 regulatory filing.

The $50 million civil penalty to be paid by Vivendi, which neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, will be distributed to shareholders hurt by its poor or misleading financial disclosures, the S.E.C. said.

This means the board must monitor management; understand, not just sign, the annual report and have zero tolerance for misleading disclosure; and be clear that it expects and demands principled disclosure, not pushing the envelope.

Sentence by sentence, the lawyer tried to portray statements from the indictment in the same way that prosecutors have described Enron's public disclosures: hyped, misleading and false.

But the S.E.C. has recently begun cracking down on companies that have incomplete or misleading disclosures, even in their press releases.

"This could," a former S.E.C. staff member said, "focus the issue on whether companies can make completely correct but totally misleading disclosures."