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from the I'll-take-'Grammar-Nazi'-for-$10,000,000-Alex-... dept.
A company that refused to pay its delivery drivers overtime for years has lost its bid to be a cheapskate, to the tune of $10,000,000. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals (decision-pdf) interpreted an exception to OT laws with special care to a meaningful but missing comma. Specifically, the phrase existing in the statute is:
"..., packing for shipment or distribution of:"
The company wanted the phrase to be interpreted as:
"..., packing for shipment, or distribution of:"
Without the comma, the activity excluded from coverage is "packing". With the comma present, it would have excluded packing or distribution.
The law as it exists in all its commaless glory:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 18 2017, @06:15PM (2 children)
For your interpretation to be correct, there also has to be two errors, because the items should be joined by "and" not "or", as they are in the second part of the statement.
What are you trying to say? The construction looks good to me. Further, "or" is a standard conjunction used just like "and" in these series lists.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Saturday March 18 2017, @07:29PM (1 child)
Even if you don't accept my argument about "and", the judges make an interesting point.
If "distribution" is meant to be an item in its own right, to be consistent with the rest of the sentence, it should be "distributing": "packing for shipment or distributing".
Instead, "distribution" matches "shipment", suggesting that "packing for shipment or distribution" should be read as one item in the list and "distribution" is not a separate item.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:27AM
Instead, "distribution" matches "shipment", suggesting that "packing for shipment or distribution" should be read as one item in the list and "distribution" is not a separate item.
Distributing also matches all the words ending in the -ing suffix since it too is a noun. It is invalid to assume the sentence is in error due to such a superficial consideration. We need to remember that legislation is typically edited by multiple parties and they need not adhere to artistic style.
Let us keep in mind that there is one interpretation of the sentence which is grammatically correct and a bunch of interpretations which aren't. This ruling reeks of judicial activism since it inserts judicial interpretation into what was a decided case and flips the previous rulings on the basis of a suspicious reinterpretation of grammar to an erroneous one.