with and ; then it is known that every component of enjoys maximum principle: the set of interior points , for which the value is greater than the supremum on the boundary, has null measure, that is, . If we change the structure of the functional, it might happen that the maximum principle fails, as in the case
with and . Indeed, for a suitable boundary value, the set of the interior points , for which the value is greater than the supremum on the boundary, has a positive measure, that is . In this paper we show that the measure of the image of these bad points is zero, that is , provided . This is a particular case of a more general theorem.