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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, @02:39PM (5 children)
That argument was addressed in the opinion. TLDR, the text is ambiguous because it can be read more than one way, and thus, the court must resort to examining the underlying purpose of the statute (preventing workers from getting screwed on wages). Here's the long way:
Parallel Usage:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:30PM (4 children)
Thus, the drivers' reading of the text is hardly fully satisfying.
In other words, the reading is wrong. The judge admits that there's no evidence of the supposed alternate interpretation and decides it's "ambiguous" anyway. I'm not surprised that someone who throws a judgment to favor one side uses ridiculous euphemisms.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:16PM (3 children)
And you again ignore that Oakhurst's reading is also unsatisfying (parallel construction). That leaves us with an ambiguous phrase.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:52PM (2 children)
And you again ignore that Oakhurst's reading is also unsatisfying (parallel construction).
Parallel construction here is a red herring. The Maine Legislative Drafting Manual is a standard for Maine legislative writing. E. B. White advice is not. And once again, let us note that the alternate interpretation requires us to assume that the sentence has a couple of significant grammatical errors, while mixing gerunds and regular nouns (the basis of the parallel construction argument) is not an error. It's merely poor style.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 20 2017, @02:44AM (1 child)
And so then is the issue with being stingy with "and/or" which brings us back to, you guessed it, ambiguity. You're just too hard headed to actually see there is an alternative.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 20 2017, @03:28AM
You're just too hard headed to actually see there is an alternative.
I don't disagree that there are plenty of alternatives. It's like a parody of Cardinal Richelieu's saying about six lines by the most honest man. Any legal writing can be interpreted however you want, if you ignore the actual writing.
The judge who wrote this opinion had to strain mightily to come up with a rationalization for inserting "ambiguity" into his ruling (beyond that of the plaintiffs), but once he did, it was a simple matter to decide things the way he wanted to. And what's worst of all is that even if the ruling is completely reversed, there will be no consequence to him for this game. We should be very leery of people in power who ignore how law is written in order to get their way.