  A famous theorem of Bers and Finn states that isolated singularities of
solutions to the non-parametric minimal surface equation are removable. We show
that this result remains valid, if the area functional is replaced by a general
functional of linear growth depending on the modulus of the gradient.
  We emphasize that Serrin ([1]) in fact proved the removability of
singularities on sets of $(n-1)$-dimensional Hausdorff measure zero in an even
more general setting. Our main interest is to generalize the comparison
principles as outlined, for instance, in Section 10 of [2] without having the
particular geometric structure of minimal surfaces. It turns out that
generalized catenoids serve as an appropriate tool for proving our results.
