A DAIRY company has settled a lawsuit over an overtime dispute that was subject to a ruling hinging on the use of the Oxford comma.
Drivers with Oakhurst Dairy in Portland, Maine, filed the lawsuit in 2014 seeking more than $10 million. Court documents last week showed they have settled for $5 million.
The Oxford comma is a controversial piece of grammar which requires a comma to be added before the final item of a list - for example ‘Eats, shoots, and leaves’. It gets its name from the Oxford University Press, who recommend its use.
The lawsuit concerned an exemption from Maine’s overtime law that says it doesn’t apply to “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of” foods.
The disagreement stemmed from the fact there’s no Oxford comma in the “packing for shipment or distribution” part. The drivers said the words referred to the activity of packing and shipping but they don’t do packing.
Following the settlement the deal needs to be rubber-stamped by a federal judge.
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