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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: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)
If it can be read many ways, it is ambiguous. That is what ambiguous means. The rest is argument, not fact.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:23PM
If it can be read many ways, it is ambiguous.
Again, that is a circular argument. You can choose to read it a different way, by making unwarranted assumptions about errors of grammar and such. And when you do choose to read it in an ambiguous way, it turns out to be ambiguous.
We've seen the outcome of such games before (a well-known example being the Second Amendment of the US Constitution which has a phrase that is popularly misinterpreted). The judge interprets the law as they see fit, invariably in accordance with their biases. The whole point of written law is to prevent people, including judges, from making up rules on the fly.
The start of any interpretation of a statute or legislation should be the actual writing. Here, the Maine legislature uses a particular grammar for in-sentence series/lists. The sentence is without error when one considers that standard and the normal interpretation (which had already passed two previous rulings). When one ambiguously interprets the sentence in any other way, it is in error. That demonstrates the ambiguity is imaginary. Just because you can choose to read the sentence in some non-standard way doesn't make that way legally valid.