Absence of Oxford comma spurs settlement

Ending a case that electrified punctuation pedants, Oakhurst Dairy settled an overtime dispute with its drivers that hinged on the lack of an Oxford comma in state law. The dairy company in Portland, Maine, agreed to pay $5 million to the drivers, according to court documents filed Thursday.

The relatively small-scale dispute gained international attention last year when the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the missing comma created enough uncertainty to side with the drivers.

But the resolution means there will be no ruling from the land’s highest courts on whether the Oxford comma — the often-skipped second comma in a series such as “A, B, and C” — is an unnecessary nuisance or a sacred defender of clarity, as its fans and detractors endlessly debate. (The comma’s name reflects that it was traditionally used by the Oxford University Press.)

The case began in 2014, when three truck drivers sued the dairy for what they said was four years’ worth of overtime pay they had been denied. Maine law requires timeand-a-half pay for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it carved out exemptions for:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce. (2) Meat and fish products. (3) Perishable foods. What followed the last comma in the first sentence was the crux of the matter: “packing for shipment or distribution of.” The court ruled that it was not clear whether the law exempted the distribution of the three categories that followed, or if it exempted “packing for” the shipment or distribution of them.

Had there been a comma after “shipment,” the meaning would have been clear. David G. Webbert, an attorney representing the drivers, acknowledged in March: “That comma would have sunk our ship.”

Since then, the Maine Legislature has replaced the commas with semi-colons while adding one after “shipment.”