Extensive research on the financial costs and risks associated with firms targeted for litigation assumes that being sued negatively impacts firm reputation. Yet, research on the consequences of corporate litigation has focused almost exclusively on the financial ramifications associated with being defendants, solely equating reputational costs with financial costs. I challenge this overly narrow view of reputation and utilize two unique datasets—one for legal actions and the other one comprising affective content analysis across 2000 media sources—for the SP I find that when firms are identified as corporate defendants, overall sentiment and optimism towards these firms suffer, while affective conflict about the focal firm is increased, for at least 1 year and even beyond. These findings strongly inform research on corporate wrongdoing and litigation as well as impression management research and raise the need to expand the view of the costs of corporate litigation, beyond financial implications.

中文翻译：

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公司诉讼的声誉成本：对公司参与诉讼的长期媒体声誉损害

对与诉讼目标公司相关的财务成本和风险的广泛研究假设被起诉会对公司声誉产生负面影响。然而，关于公司诉讼后果的研究几乎完全集中在与成为被告相关的财务后果上，仅仅将声誉成本与财务成本等同起来。我挑战这种过于狭隘的声誉观点，并利用两个独特的数据集——一个用于法律诉讼，另一个包含跨 2000 个媒体来源的情感内容分析——对于 SP，我发现当公司被确定为公司被告时，整体情绪和乐观情绪这些公司遭受损失，同时与焦点公司的情感冲突增加，至少持续 1 年甚至更长。