<story><title> Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eranation</author><text>Why on earth not to use programming language like constructs to write legal documents.&lt;p&gt;No compiler or anyone who can read code ever had any ambiguity reading simple code.&lt;p&gt;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])</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>The title of this HN post, like nearly every headline I&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s actually more complicated, as the last item in the list is (potentially) compound, which makes it difficult to tell whether the &amp;quot;and&amp;quot; is to be attached to the final element alone, or to be a binding of the final element and previous elements.&lt;p&gt;Not that this its uncommon for articles to have misleading headlines, but I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s typo led to a million dollar loss.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;volokh-conspiracy&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;15&amp;#x2F;a-b-or-c-vs-a-b-or-c-the-serial-comma-and-the-law&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;volokh-conspiracy&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;201...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>m3ta</author><text>Ethereum tried this, and a bug in the code lead to millions of dollars of value lost. They ended up hard-forking the code by changing it to match the intended outcome of the code, thus reversing the actual outcome of the execution of that code.&lt;p&gt;Eventually you&amp;#x27;ll have millions of lines of code, and within those millions of lines of code there will be a bug. It&amp;#x27;s no different than writing a legal contract in English. In both cases you can only do your best to make sure there is no misunderstanding or undefined behavior, but there is always a possibility that at some point someone will find a flaw and exploit it.</text></comment>
<story><title> Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eranation</author><text>Why on earth not to use programming language like constructs to write legal documents.&lt;p&gt;No compiler or anyone who can read code ever had any ambiguity reading simple code.&lt;p&gt;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])</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>The title of this HN post, like nearly every headline I&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s actually more complicated, as the last item in the list is (potentially) compound, which makes it difficult to tell whether the &amp;quot;and&amp;quot; is to be attached to the final element alone, or to be a binding of the final element and previous elements.&lt;p&gt;Not that this its uncommon for articles to have misleading headlines, but I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s typo led to a million dollar loss.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;volokh-conspiracy&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;15&amp;#x2F;a-b-or-c-vs-a-b-or-c-the-serial-comma-and-the-law&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;volokh-conspiracy&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;201...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>berberous</author><text>This is just as easy to write in English without ambiguity:&lt;p&gt;the (i) canning, (ii) processing, (iii) preserving, (iv) freezing, (v) drying, (vi) marketing, (vii) storing, (viii) packing for shipment or (ix) distribution of: .....</text></comment>