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Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute (nytimes.com)
Daniel VIctor, writing for The New York Times: A class-action lawsuit about overtime pay for truck drivers hinged entirely on a debate that has bitterly divided friends, families and foes: The dreaded -- or totally necessary -- Oxford comma, perhaps the most polarizing of punctuation marks. What ensued in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and in a 29-page court decision handed down on Monday, was an exercise in high-stakes grammar pedantry that could cost a dairy company in Portland, Me., an estimated $10 million. In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, seeking more than four years' worth of overtime pay that they had been denied (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate link from a syndicated partner). Maine law requires workers to be paid 1.5 times their normal rate for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it carves out some exemptions. [...] The debate over commas is often a pretty inconsequential one, but it was anything but for the truck drivers. Note the lack of Oxford comma -- also known as the serial comma -- in the following state law, which says overtime rules do not apply to: "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. Oakhurst Dairy is arguing that "packing for shipment" and "distribution" are two different items in the list. But that's not how the truck drivers are seeing it. They argue that "packing for shipment or distribution" is one item.
Looking past the arguments about commas, does anyone one know *why* there is no overtime pay for these specific jobs? How old is the law in question?
have exceptions for overtime pay? Overtime pay exceptions were supposed to be for high paying desk jobs like CEO where it wasn't worth anyone's time/effort to calculate it. Jesus, just repel it entirely already and stop pretending. Or better yet, recognize that any law exempting people from OT will be written from the ground up with abuse in mind and not pass them.
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I see no ambiguity here. Of course, I also write parsers.
packing for shipment or distribution of X
=> packing for (shipment or distirbution) of X
NOT
=> packing for shipment of X, distribution of X
While the second half of the statement uses semicolons instead of commas, they clearly use the oxford comma version of grammar rules. Therefore you must assume the first half of the sentence is also using the same rules, so the truckers are right.
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I understand 8 as "packing for distribution".
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Much as I want to side with the truckers on this one, no they're not right. In American English, it's quite clear that the two items were meant to be separate and no comma is required before the last conjunction.
I personally think it's bullshit that Maine has decided to carve out an exception to overtime laws for one specific interest group (no doubt one that regularly brib....ahem...."donates to the campaigns of" state political officials). I also think such obvious interest-group exceptions should be against Federal law, if it's not already. But hanging their hat on a comma that's not required in American English is a weak-as-fuck way to go about getting the overtime that they really do deserve.
BTW, if they drive any of this dairy out of state, they would fall under Federal trucking regulations, which don't provide for overtime at all (only 10-hour rest breaks for every 11 hours of driving and 70-hour-week limits). That's bullshit too.
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The activities "canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, or packing" are all activities that take place in a food processing plant. The work in such plants is often seasonal, with long hours for a short period when the harvest comes in, and so exempting such work from overtime pay makes some sense. Truckers, on the other hand typically have work year round so there is no obvious reason to exempt them from the general rule of overtime pay just based on what type of cargo they happen to be carrying. If the legislature's intent was to exempt truckers, it would likely have done so more clearly. Reading such an exemption into a law because of ambiguous punctuation would be improper.
Since there is ambiguity, look at the language used to form the list:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, stoing, packing for shipment or distribution of
This is a list of verb forms (present participles) and so "shipment or distribution" (nouns) is a qualifier for "packing" and not additions to the list themselves. So from the context, or pattern, the "or" binds more tightly with the modifiers and not with the list. If the list was intended to include "distributing" or "shipping" it would have added the words in that form.
Alternately (as the court found), one could plausibly interpret that because the other exempted activities are all in gerund form, while using "distribution" instead of "distributing", that it is reasonable to assume that "distribution" modifies "packing" in the same was that "shipment" does, rather than being a separate item.
Skip the comma altogether and use a numbered list. Eliminates the ambiguity entirely then.
i think this just shows why laws shouldn't be written in English. Laws should have their own syntax including special delimiters to clarify items in a list. It should be designed sort of like a programming language.
comas clearly aren't sufficient.
Commas are sufficient, but the lack of an Oxford comma should always been seen as grammatically incorrect, and whomever wrote the Maine law needs to not be able to write laws concerning grammar anymore.