Litigation can sometimes be useful as a tool to punish companies that have genuinely done wrong.

Investors have punished sprawling companies that are hard to value ever since the collapse of Enron.

Investors remain ready to punish companies that suffer from the weak economy.

The secondary boycott is an effort to punish commercial companies all over the world with economic ties to Israel.

Still, investors continued to punish companies with deteriorating growth prospects.

And they are quite willing to punish companies that have unexpected bad news.

Unfortunately, as he said, there are other players in the market who will "punish" companies based on their quarterly reporting.

Besides, should we punish companies that have a wide variance in review scores?

Still, investors yesterday continued to punish companies that said their earnings might fail to meet expectations.

Despite the ground broken by the three-year investigation, the power of the statute to punish companies remains limited.