As a part of their publicly-revealed internal policy and with WWE being a publicly-traded United States company, if they refused to enforce said policy, they would be in violation of several statutes under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the corporate leadership (including the members of the Board of Directors) could be charged with and tried for fraud. Now, in such an event, most of the Board would be safe, but the top members of the corporate leadership (still Vince, HHH, Laurinaitis) would all be up to be removed from their positions and possibly face jail time.
If Orton earns a third strike, he will have to be fired. If there is a limitation to how long he would have to stay fired, I am unaware of it. For appearance's sake, I'm sure it would be a length of time sufficient to show their corporate displeasure, but you also have to keep in mind that WWE is a company with a reputation (earned up to the 1990's, particularly) for playing fast and loose with the rules and one that both Vince and Linda McMahon have gone out of their way to increase its positive public perception. As high as Vince (or HHH or anybody else) might be on Orton, he's still got to play by the rules. HHH was (and probably still is) a huge fan of Jeff Hardy, but both have gone on record as saying that they would never bring Jeff back without seeing real proof of his willingness to defeat his demons.
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