Did this Maine law without an Oxford comma require overtime pay for delivery drivers?
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  Did this Maine law without an Oxford comma require overtime pay for delivery drivers?
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Question: Did this Maine law without an Oxford comma require overtime pay for delivery drivers?
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Yes
 
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No
 
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Author Topic: Did this Maine law without an Oxford comma require overtime pay for delivery drivers?  (Read 608 times)
they don't love you like i love you
BRTD
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« on: March 19, 2021, 08:57:22 AM »

Here's a lawsuit that involved the Oxford comma. Delivery drivers for a dairy company in Maine sued claiming that they were owned time and a half pay for overtime hours. Maine law required it for most workers but had exemptions listed out as:

Quote
“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.”

The lawsuit hinged on the lack of a comma after "shipment". The drivers argued that though they distributed the materials they didn't pack them and thus their job was not "packing for shipment or distribution". However the company argued that this referred to two different things: "packing for shipment" and "distribution", which the drivers' job would fall under.

The case was actually ruled on in the drivers' favor, and the law was rewritten shortly afterwards.
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Donerail
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« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2021, 09:59:22 AM »

Yes, but not for reasons involving the serial comma. Every item on that list is a gerund, except for "shipment" and "distribution." If they were supposed to be read as part of the same series, it would read "storing, packing for shipment or distributing of." Of course in a real case you'd also look at the legislative history, which I'm too lazy to do here, but grammatically I think this favors the drivers.
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Tintrlvr
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« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2021, 12:18:28 PM »
« Edited: March 19, 2021, 12:31:56 PM by 306 »

This was a bad decision that is often studied in law school for the wrong reasons. The judge clearly did not understand grammar, as the understanding advanced by the drivers leads to an ungrammatical sentence where every item is separated by a comma and there is no conjunction, so it clearly could not be properly read the way they read it.

(For clarity's sake, let's just say it read "packing" instead of "packing for shipment or distribution" at the end. It would then read as follows: "The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing of:". Where's the conjunction? We don't even know if the commas are supposed to signify "and" or "or"!)

But the decision was ultimately motivated by politics by the judge and not an actual careful reading of the text anyway.

Yes, but not for reasons involving the serial comma. Every item on that list is a gerund, except for "shipment" and "distribution." If they were supposed to be read as part of the same series, it would read "storing, packing for shipment or distributing of." Of course in a real case you'd also look at the legislative history, which I'm too lazy to do here, but grammatically I think this favors the drivers.

Mixing gerunds and non-gerunds is perfectly grammatically permissible and not indicative one or another unless it's totally ambiguous. But it's not, as indicated above.
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Donerail
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« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2021, 12:44:37 PM »

Yes, but not for reasons involving the serial comma. Every item on that list is a gerund, except for "shipment" and "distribution." If they were supposed to be read as part of the same series, it would read "storing, packing for shipment or distributing of." Of course in a real case you'd also look at the legislative history, which I'm too lazy to do here, but grammatically I think this favors the drivers.

Mixing gerunds and non-gerunds is perfectly grammatically permissible and not indicative one or another unless it's totally ambiguous. But it's not, as indicated above.
But it's also grammatically permissible to omit the conjunction! It is unusual, but so is a series of mixed gerunds and non-gerunds.
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BRTD
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« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2021, 01:13:45 PM »

I think the best argument against the drivers' case would actually be that "packing for shipment or distribution" is a somewhat awkward phrase, as "shipment" is a part of "distribution". If the "or distribution" part was missing the drivers would unambiguously be eligible, but it's hard to imagine if any other packers would be or how someone would argue they are eligible because they pack "for distribution" instead of "for shipment". That implies the legislative intent was not to clarify what forms of packing were exempt but rather treating the packing and distribution as two separate items.
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Fubart Solman
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« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2021, 01:38:12 PM »

As written, I don’t think that they should’ve won, but in a way, I’m glad that they did. I’m also glad that the law was later clarified.
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they don't love you like i love you
BRTD
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« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2021, 02:01:55 PM »

As written, I don’t think that they should’ve won, but in a way, I’m glad that they did. I’m also glad that the law was later clarified.

Morally yeah, especially as I don't see any reason why even the clearly outlined jobs should be exempt from overtime pay. But it's still a great example of why I tend to support using an Oxford comma, considering the obviousness of examples like "I was with my two cats, Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto." (and in cases where it doesn't clear up ambiguity it would be best to just rephrase the sentence.)
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brucejoel99
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« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2021, 02:13:09 PM »

As written, I don’t think that they should’ve won, but in a way, I’m glad that they did. I’m also glad that the law was later clarified.

Yeah, Oakhurt Dairy didn't get screwed so much as their workers were getting screwed & had to turn to using a legal Hail Mary to get their overtime pay. F**k businesses who don't pay workers for their labor. They're workers, not slaves.
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Tintrlvr
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« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2021, 06:57:53 PM »

Yes, but not for reasons involving the serial comma. Every item on that list is a gerund, except for "shipment" and "distribution." If they were supposed to be read as part of the same series, it would read "storing, packing for shipment or distributing of." Of course in a real case you'd also look at the legislative history, which I'm too lazy to do here, but grammatically I think this favors the drivers.

Mixing gerunds and non-gerunds is perfectly grammatically permissible and not indicative one or another unless it's totally ambiguous. But it's not, as indicated above.
But it's also grammatically permissible to omit the conjunction! It is unusual, but so is a series of mixed gerunds and non-gerunds.

No, it's not permissible in proper English to omit the conjunction. Doing so creates ambiguity (is the rule that they have to be all of those the items in the list, or only one?). Sure, you might leave out  the conjunction in casual speech or writing (it's totally fine to speak or write ungrammatically, accepting that context clears up the ambiguity created), but that's not relevant. Mixing gerunds and non-gerunds isn't a grammatical rule at all and doesn't indicate anything.
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Donerail
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« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2021, 09:21:53 PM »
« Edited: March 19, 2021, 09:29:28 PM by Gulf Coastal Elite »

No, it's not permissible in proper English to omit the conjunction. Doing so creates ambiguity (is the rule that they have to be all of those the items in the list, or only one?). Sure, you might leave out  the conjunction in casual speech or writing (it's totally fine to speak or write ungrammatically, accepting that context clears up the ambiguity created), but that's not relevant.
It is frequently permissible in proper English to omit the conjunction, just as it is permissible to add additional conjunctions. Asyndeton and polysyndeton are well-recognized rhetorical techniques that can be found in a variety of texts, from "I came, I saw, I conquered" to "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Statutes are no exception — plenty of rules say something like "plaintiffs may be joined if" and then go on to list various conditions, without including a conjunction before the final item in the list. The legislature probably should not do that, because (as you mentioned) it creates ambiguity, but it is not impermissible or unknown in formal writing.

Mixing gerunds and non-gerunds isn't a grammatical rule at all and doesn't indicate anything.
Yes it is — parallel structure is a well-recognized rule of English grammar. If the legislature is writing a list and chooses to break the pattern, the use of a different form should carry some meaning.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2021, 11:41:52 PM »

The law as written was unclear and susceptible of multiple interpretations. I personally would look first to the legislative history for guidance to resolve the ambiguity. Lacking such guidance, then since it created a set of exceptions to the usual rule, I would pick the interpretation that creates the smallest set of exceptions. The Oxford comma would not be the only way to rewrite that law to explicitly exclude delivery.

Not sliding the "the", the "of", or both would make the intent clear regardless of whether an Oxford Comma was used or not.

The below rewrite is clearly adverse to employees regardless of whether the Oxford comma is used or not used, albeit a bit clunky.

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

“(1) Agricultural produce;

“(2) Meat and fish products; and

“(3) Perishable foods.”
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H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
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« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2021, 01:21:20 PM »

Voted yes by mistake. The omission of an implicit Oxford comma is a common grammatical construction that occasionally creates ambiguity, but is often used to mean the same thing. The omission of a conjunction (“marketing, storing, or packing for shipment or distribution of”) is a much starker issue that radically changes how the sentence is read for nearly everyone. Note that the two examples of asyndeton implicitly omit the word “and”, not “or”.
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Geoffrey Howe
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« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2021, 03:19:46 AM »
« Edited: April 16, 2021, 03:48:17 AM by Geoffrey Howe »

Is there a canon of interpretation or statutory provision which says which side to favour in an ambiguous case like this?

Also, I wonder whether Scalia would have seen it fit to check the legislative history for this one.
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Maik Otter
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« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2021, 05:36:57 AM »

In the State of Maine (= ME), George Walker Bush is probihited to drive by car on the drivers seat!
May could use of horse instead!
Howdy?

Maine is weird!
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John Dule
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« Reply #14 on: April 16, 2021, 02:31:45 PM »

In the State of Maine (= ME), George Walker Bush is probihited to drive by car on the drivers seat!
May could use of horse instead!
Howdy?

Maine is weird!

Quoting this post so that I can easily find your profile again, lol.
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Anzeigenhauptmeister
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« Reply #15 on: April 16, 2021, 06:04:27 PM »

If the Anglo-American hemisphere wouldn't have been too lazy to introduce and learn oblique cases in the past, you guys wouldn't need to keep struggling with such ambiguous statements. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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AGA
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« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2021, 06:37:56 PM »

No because there is no "or" before "packing".
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