
 Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute - uyoakaoma
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html
======
gnicholas
The title of this HN post, like nearly every headline I've seen for this
lawsuit, is misleading. The headlines makes it seem as if the company forgot
an Oxford comma and is now losing millions as a result of having made a
typographical error.

This is not the case. There is a statute that does not have a comma where one
might be, and the litigants fought over whether the lack of a comma toward the
end of a list ought to be read in light of the Oxford comma convention or not.

And it's actually more complicated, as the last item in the list is
(potentially) compound, which makes it difficult to tell whether the "and" is
to be attached to the final element alone, or to be a binding of the final
element and previous elements.

Not that this its uncommon for articles to have misleading headlines, but I've
been surprised at the extent to which nearly every article (save this one [1],
by the ever-precise law professors at the Volokh Conspiracy) have
misrepresented the case (or misunderstood it?) to make it seem like a
company's typo led to a million dollar loss.

1: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2017/03/15/a-b-or-c-vs-a-b-or-c-the-serial-comma-and-the-law/)

~~~
eranation
Why on earth not to use programming language like constructs to write legal
documents.

No compiler or anyone who can read code ever had any ambiguity reading simple
code.

let overtime_allowed = true unless (action in [canning, processing,
preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing_for (shipment or
distribution)] of [Agricultural produce, Meat and fish products, Perishable
foods])

~~~
Karunamon
There's an argument to be made that it already is. It's called lawyerese (or
just L), its programmers are highly regulated and highly paid.

What happened here is what happens when someone with insufficient skill tries
to write an L program. The language has no such thing as linting or syntax
checking, so while a faulty program will always run, it will return with
unexpected or absurd results. L failures tend to make C's nasal demons look
positively friendly by comparison.

There's no formal spec, it's literally centuries of ad-hoc patches and fixes
and revisions piled onto one another.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> What happened here is what happens when someone with insufficient skill
> tries to write an L program. The language has no such thing as linting or
> syntax checking, so while a faulty program will always run, it will return
> with unexpected or absurd results. L failures tend to make C's nasal demons
> look positively friendly by comparison.

Worse than that, legal "code" has thousands of frequently used implementations
(judges) and millions of one-time-use implementations (jurors), all of which
may interpret it differently, both from each other and even from their own
past versions. So if you thought writing JavaScript was bad because you have
to deal with a half-dozen browser implementations and quirks...

~~~
jacques_chester
Jurors don't interpret law and judges have a well-organised system for
exception handling.

The legal system is massively reliable. By the time something reaches an
appeal court, you're already into 5th 9 territory. You can live an entire life
under it, moving through it, completely surrounded by it, and never have to
see it or think about it.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Jurors don't interpret law

They can and do. Quoting the Oregon constitution:

"In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine
the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the
right of new trial, as in civil cases."

Similar measures exist in other legal jurisdictions, though it isn't
universal.

> judges have a well-organised system for exception handling

I didn't suggest they don't; I suggested that two different judges can
interpret the law differently.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _under the direction of the Court as to the law_

The point here is that jurors decide on facts _according to law_ , as
instructed by a judge[0]. The judge is also asked during trial to consider
legal questions -- not the jurors.

> _I suggested that two different judges can interpret the law differently._

I suggested that is why there is a hierarchy of courts, with the hardest and
most important ones being delegated upwards via the process of appeal.

I am, of course, not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. I did enjoy my time
in law school though. The main thing I learned is that the law is a language
that resembles but is not common English. Phrases like the one you quoted have
to be read in the larger context of case law and statute law.

[0]
[http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources...](http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network/how_courts_work/juryinstruct.html)

------
mbillie1
Alternate headline: workers to receive appropriate compensation following
accurate interpretation of state law.

~~~
wlll
I have never fully understood the insistence that employers should be allowed
to demand unpaid work from their employees.

Surely if your business is only viable with coerced labour then it isn't a
viable business?

Or maybe if you need employees help to run it without pay them then they can
be given a share of the business so they can benefit from the future returns
that their efforts provide?

~~~
cortesoft
No one is demanding unpaid work. The question is whether they are owed 1.5x
their salary or just their salary.

Overtime rules say that if you work overtime (and the definition of overtime
varies by state), they have to pay you 1.5x your salary. In this case, they
were only paying their regular salary.

No one was working for free.

~~~
wlll
Ah, gotcha. For some reason I always associated overtime with "unpaid".
Probably because when I was a kid and had crappy jobs there would always be
stuff that would need to be done at the start and end of every shift that
outside my regular hours and therefore unpaid. I wasn't savvy enough to ask
for pay, or to tell them where to stick it.

 _edit_ concrete example: Blockbuster Video. Shop closed at 11, the time I
stopped getting paid. At that point I had to lock up and do accounts stuff,
clean, and general admin (plugging the CC machine into the phone line so it
could phone home and get lists of updated cards to watch for) etc. Would
usually take about half an hour ISTR.

~~~
veritas3241
GameStop is a company that had similar tactics. Had to close the registers,
process and late trade-ins, and close/clean the store. Then they trusted me to
take thousands of dollars to the bank and drop it in the slot. But all of it
was unpaid.

~~~
cavanasm
Was it GameStop, or the store manager? I'd bet money the GameStop corporate HR
people would have fired the guy on the spot if they heard about something like
that. My own retail experience (big box office supply store) was so metrics
driven I can absolutely imagine a scenario where the store manager tries to
illegally cut work hours to make his store's numbers look better.

------
weeksie
I don't think I've ever heard an impassioned argument against the Oxford
Comma. I mean, I have no problem with it, but there seems to be a belief that
this is a less filling/tastes great holy war, but really, omitting the serial
comma is fairly archaic at this point. At least in my experience. Sometimes
lists need one, sometimes they don't. At this point in the evolution of our
written language that should be a fairly unambiguous proposition.

~~~
leephillips
"omitting the serial comma is fairly archaic at this point"

Wish that were true! But many news organization style guides condemn the
Oxford comma, with sometimes disastrous results:

[http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-w...](http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-
want-of-an-oxford-comma/)

~~~
mercer
Is there _any_ good argument for eschewing the extra comma when it clearly
disambiguates the meaning of the sentence?

I can't think of one, but I also find it (slightly) difficult to believe that
anyone smart enough to write an article would insist on ambiguity for no good
reason...

EDIT: to disambiguate my own comment: with 'when' I meant 'in cases where
leaving out the comma causes ambiguity'. Personally I try to prioritize
clarity so sometimes I will use an extra comma, and sometimes I won't.

~~~
jakelazaroff
It can create ambiguity as well as remove it, depending on which terms can be
appositives to other terms. Classic example:

"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God." (ambiguous without the comma)

"To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God." (ambiguous with the comma)

~~~
UweSchmidt
Not a native speaker, but if Ayn Rand is your mother I'd blame the first comma
for the ambiguity.

"To my mother Ayn Rand, and God."

~~~
SamBam
But that's just grammatically wrong, in English.

Appositive clauses require a comma. Forgetting God, you can just look at the
sentence "To my mother, Ayn Rand." We put a comma there because the object of
the sentence is "mother," and then we're clarifying who "mother" is. We'd only
omit the comma if "Mother Ayn Rand" were a noun phrase all by itself, like
"Father John."

Similarly: "This is to my arch-nemesis, Ayn Rand, who always doubted me." The
commas are necessary there for the same reason.

(How did Ayn Rand enter this discussion..?)

------
rayiner
The law in question excluded "canning, processing, preserving, freezing,
drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of"
agricultural products from the requirement for 1.5x overtime pay.

In a sane world where everyone used the Oxford comma, that sentence would be
clear and the last item in the sequence would be "packing (for shipment or
distribution)" and the drivers would be entitled to their overtime pay. But
the Maine Legislature's drafting manual recommends omitting the Oxford comma
so the above sentence is ambiguous. And it's really ambiguous because either
meaning could really be what the Legislature intended.

~~~
marcoperaza
The way I read it, the intended meaning is as if the comma was right after
shipment. A list like that requires a conjunction before the last element.
"Or" serves that function. If "or" was merely internal to the final item, it
would be grammatically incorrect.

Here is the full context, with the only grammatically correct place to put the
comma:

 _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._

edit: fixed formatting

~~~
cvoss
I also read it the way you do. But interestingly, there is what appears to be
an Oxford _semicolon_ between items (2) and (3). The inclusion of an Oxford
delimiter in one list and its exclusion in another list would seem
inconsistent. If anything, the second list is the one that does not need the
extra punctuation because the items of that second list are also delimited by
newlines and the enumeration. Very weird indeed.

------
burntwater
My question is, what makes the canning industry so unique and special that
it's deserving of exemptions from fair pay?

~~~
briandear
Not even that -- the fact that legislators actually wrote this as a law is
interesting. There is likely a historical reason or something unique about
that industry that prompted this.

~~~
jessaustin
Probable historical reason: the industry had money and therefore political
power, and its workers were poor immigrants therefore without political power.

------
kazinator
It is perfectly clear here that "distribution" is a separate list element, set
off by the final disjunction "or":

 _The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:_

The pattern being: _A, B, C, D or E_.

This does not change even if we add a spurious comma after D:

 _A, B, C, D, or E_.

D and E are still separately listed items.

Quite simply, _D or E_ cannot be a single list item without being preceded by
some conjunction.

If the intended meaning were "packing (for shipment or distribution)" to the
exclusion of "distribution", then the conjunction "and" or "or" would be
required before that entire phrase:

 _A, B, C, D or E for X or Y._

Here the entire phrase _E for X or Y_ (such as _packing for shipment or
distribution_ ) is now the last list item (and, again, that is clear whether
or not we add a spurious comma after D).

The "or" in (for shipment or distribution) belongs to this inner phrase and
therefore cannot serve as the delimiting conjunction of the last list item;
another delimiter is required.

Thus, the insertion of the comma makes no difference. The alternative
interpretation is hard to justify, because it is based on the claim that a
meaning-altering conjunction is missing, even though the existing text happens
to be grammatical.

------
seanwilson
In almost every case I see people arguing for an Oxford comma I see a sentence
that should be broken up or restructured to make it less ambiguous. A sentence
where not noticing a comma can drastically alter it's meaning (especially when
it's a losing battle to make everyone understand the Oxford comma) is not a
good sentence.

~~~
unethical_ban
Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.

It seems clear to me that if you are listing multiple items in a sentence, a
comma should separate every item in the list.

Alternatively, we could use the semi-colon for lists. This is what I do
sometimes at work, especially when the items in the list may contain commas.

~~~
jotux
>Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.

Why the arbitrary restriction on bulleted lists? Situations like this seem
ideally suited for a simple list.

~~~
unethical_ban
Because prose doesn't use bulleted lists.

~~~
jotux
The law in question has a numbered list.

------
jeffmk
Avoiding the Oxford comma is the JavaScript automatic semicolon insertion of
English grammar.

Each has odd exceptions that have to be thought about, and each is polarizing.

In both cases I really wonder: why the insistence on adding to cognitive load?

------
stupidcar
"I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

~~~
bandrami
Now, if you make it singular, it's the _presence_ of an Oxford comma that
makes it ambiguous:

"I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand, and God"

Whereas

"I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand and God"

As long as English uses commas for both apposition and list separation, there
will always be ambiguity no matter which comma convention is used.

~~~
noja
Why do you have that first comma.

"I'd like to thank my mother Ayn Rand, and God" is clearer.

~~~
in_cahoots
Yes, but how do you handle the case where your mother is not Ayn Rand and you
want to thank three individuals?

~~~
mrob
"I'd like to thank my mother, to thank Ayn Rand, and to thank God."

~~~
desdiv
Following the conventions of programming languages with mandatory bounds
checking (and thus have to keep track of the array size at all times):

"I'd like to thank three people: my mother, Ayn Rand, and God."

------
bmcusick
There should be an "or" before the word "packing" if "packing for shipment or
distribution" is a single phrase (rather than two alternatives). The Oxford
Comma debate is a sideshow. It's all about where you find the "or", which
indicates the last choice.

------
JetSpiegel
Original Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-
lawsuit.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-
lawsuit.html?_r=0)

------
j_joshua
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of...

More telling is the difference between the verbs ending in "ing" and those
not.

canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, and
packing are the actions.

shipment and distribution relate to packing.

If distribution was supposed to be a separate activity, they would have used
"distributing of" instead of "distribution of".

------
kolbe
It's kind of amazing that we even write laws this way anymore. There isn't
much to gain from freely allowing legislators to use the English language to
dictate our system of rules. I'm sure there are much clearer templates that
everyone should follow.

~~~
swayvil
Yes, law should be written like code. A "tree of nested assertions" or
whatever you call it.

Law is code. The hardware is masses of people.

------
danbruc
Couldn't they just have looked up the intended meaning of the law? I mean laws
or not made by just writing down the law in its final form, there are designs,
discussions, and drafts. Wouldn't it be likely that there are documents
showing the intended meaning more clearly, for example by listing the
exceptions as bullet points? In my opinion that would provide a way better
argument to settle the issue one way or another than appealing to grammar
rules and style guides.

------
madenine
Ignoring the comma issue, it still seems poorly worded.

"The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:"

Lets group related activities based on what workers might be doing/where they
might be doing it.

If the law intended to exclude truck drivers from overtime, our groups could
be:

\- Canning, Processing, Preserving, Freezing, Drying (processing facility?)

\- Marketing (?)

\- Storing, Packing for Shipment (Warehouse)

\- Distribution (On the road)

Why is one sentence trying to define rules for all those groups?

~~~
logfromblammo
I think there is a legal principle that takes all enumerations as closed sets.

You may enumerate a set as an example of a class. You might say, "animals,
such as lions, tigers and bears." If you wrote that as legalese, only lions,
tigers, and bears would be considered "animals" for the purpose of the
chapter.

Legalese has to be really specific with respect to lists, otherwise clever
lawyers can argue their way around the holes in whatever manner best benefits
their client. If you're going to specify _any_ sub-activity of the industry in
question, you have to specify _all_ of them that you with to include for the
purposes of the law.

I would say that distribution includes shipment, so "packing for shipment or
distribution" is unnecessarily redundant. As such, I would prefer the
interpretation of "packing for shipment, or distribution". Just as you
wouldn't say "lions, tigers, tigers, and bears" you would never say "shipment
or distribution" as its own clause. Distribution is shipment.

So to make it unambiguous, you could use stricter redundancy aversion:
"packing for shipment or shipment".

------
bandrami
The case was decided on equity, not grammar. What the comma style did was give
the company a specious argument to make.

~~~
jessaustin
IANAL, but if this verdict were based on equity it would have helped out
everybody on cannery row, not just the drivers.

~~~
bandrami
Well, "equity"

------
ape4
Perhaps they should adopt programming language like syntax for laws. eg You
will be jailed for [kill, hurt, steal].

~~~
donarb
Define 'kill'. What about self-defense, soldier in time of war, accidental,
negligence? You're going to need an overly large switch statement to decide,
and that's just one crime.

~~~
mcbits
If laws were codified in a machine-friendly format, automatic code analysis
could alert lawmakers and the public to ambiguity, conflicts, redundancy,
unused code, opportunities for optimization and verbosity.

------
boltzmannbrain
JFK and Stalin are still the best proponents for using the Oxford comma:
[http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/...](http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/Oxford-Comma.jpg)

------
sixhobbits
There are two types of people this world: those who use oxford commas, those
who don't and those who should.

------
bob_rad
This should totally be a case study in grammar lessons. This comma could cost
you millions kids, pay attention!

~~~
sjcsjc
This comma could cost you millions kids. Pay attention! FTFY

~~~
elros
Well if we're gonna be pedantic let's not forget the vocative comma:

"This comma could cost you millions, kids." :-)

~~~
sjcsjc
I stand corrected.

------
Joeboy
[https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roge...](https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roger-
casement-the-gay-irish-humanitarian-who-was-hanged-on-a-comma)

------
gtirloni
Instead of discussing a grammar issue, why not go back to the intent of the
law and apply it as... intended? What were the lawmakers thinking when they
wrote that law? Are they still around? Are there any notes or recorded
sessions discussing this?

~~~
shmageggy
Do we expect the truckers to do said research in order to know how to
interpret the law? Of course not. The whole point is that the law should be
explicit and unambiguous as written.

~~~
danbruc
It would be sufficient if the court does it.

------
lotsofpulp
I wonder how Maine is able to exempt works from overtime, wouldn't that
contradict federal overtime laws?

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm)

~~~
maxerickson
The federal law has lots of exemptions that apply to various hourly workers.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Oh, I thought the only exemption was for the usual adminstrative/white collar
type work:

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuid...](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuide.pdf)

------
PuffinBlue
The article asks:

> Does the law intend to exempt the distribution of the three categories that
> follow, or does it mean to exempt packing for the shipping or distribution
> of them?

I'd say it does both. It exempts workers who package for shipment AND workers
who distribute.

Discuss... :-)

~~~
briandear
Are shipment and distribution fundamentally different? Seem like synonyms to
me and thus the lack of comma ought not matter because: "package for shipment
-- or distribution." I guess my question is how packing would be materially
different for shipment or distribution.

Since it seems analogous, a reasonably intelligent person could assume that
the sentence could read, "packing for shipment or shipment" that implies that
shipment is a separate activity while packing for shipment is another
activity. -- since shipping is really a subset of distribution actions.

My question is why they sued -- clarity should have been sought before
engaging in the work. It wasn't like these guys were unaware of the law. They
chose to read it in the most advantageous way rather than obtaining clarity
before working.

~~~
donarb
What person goes and reads all applicable laws before taking a job? You've got
federal/state/local laws to sift through.

And who's to say that a company can't hire lawyers to comb through old laws
looking for loopholes to screw over workers?

------
Mz
As a freelance writer, this is sort of cool to me.

"The pen is mightier than the sword" and all that. A little comma -- or lack
thereof -- moves millions of dollars in one direction or the other.

Food for thought.

------
hughlang
They could have done so much more with that first sentence. Example: "An
appeals court ruling on Monday was a victory for truck drivers, punctuation
pedants and nazis"

------
dredmorbius
Of possible relevance: _The New York Times_ , per its internal style guide,
eschews the Oxford Comma.

I smell a possible revolt on the part of Mr. Victor.

------
dsfyu404ed
Meanwhile a complete jerk move did cost Maine university employees thousands
of dollars in unpaid wages over the course of a decade.

------
timthelion
Why is everyone discussing the grammar and no one questioning why laws have
such silly exceptions? Why should there be an exception for the packaging of
perishable goods? It is not like the goods cannot be packaged if the workers
are paid extra for working over-time. And it is not like a well planned
logistics chain should necessarilly be forced to have workers working
overtime. So really, this exception is just a gift to a specific industry.

------
verbatim
The longstanding question posed by Vampire Weekend has finally been answered:
Oakhurst Dairy cares.

------
d--b
Or: why AI is a long way to understand natural languages.

------
kaosjester
The sheer amount of misused punctuation in this comments section seems to
indicate a systematic problem.

~~~
christotty
I believe you mean systemic.

~~~
danielweber
Muphry's Law.

------
dmckeon
Also posted to HN as:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156)

For me the lesson here is "use unambigious language" rather than
"{always|never} use an Oxford comma".

The 29-page decision shows that the "Oxford comma" is only part of the court's
interpretation of the law, and shows that the court examined several paths to
reach an interpretation.

[http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca1/16-1901...](http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca1/16-1901/16-1901-2017-03-13.pdf?ts=1489437006)

