A missing comma resulted in a group of dairy drivers getting $5 million

A missing comma resulted in a group of dairy drivers getting $5 mioA missing comma resulted in a group of dairy drivers getting $5 millionUnclear grammar can literally cost your company millions of dollars. Just ask Oakhurst Dairy in Maine. According to court documents filed on Thursday, the Maine-based dairy company said it was settling its comma dispute with its drivers for $5 million dollars.The case, over on a missing Oxford comma in Maine overtime pays law, captured national attention this past March. Drivers originally filed a class-action lawsuit in 2014 that sought mora than $10 million in overtime pay, arguing that the missing punctuation mark was on their side.According to Maine state law, the following activities were not eligible for overtime payThe 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 drivers argued that the packing for shi pment or distribution of was defining the single activity of packing - meaning, they were spared from the overtime pay exception list because drivers distributed food but they didnt pack them. Oakhurst Dairy, meanwhile, argued that the law was taking distribution as a separate activity, so it did include the drivers in the overtime exception list.On March 13, a federal court reversed a lower court decision and sided with the truck drivers, saying that there was enough punctuation ambiguity in the drivers favor.Unclear grammar has cost companies millionsOxford comma proponents argue that if the law had a serial comma, or Oxford comma, after shipment, it would have been clear that distribution was written to be a separate item in the laws list.Perhaps sensing more grammar-related disputes on the horizon, Maine is taking no chances and has removed any ambiguity in its overtime pay exception list. Now, the Maine law has added semicolons to separate each of the activities not eligible i n its listThe canning processing preserving freezing drying marketing storing packing for shipment or distributing of (1) Agricultural produce (2) Meat and fish products and (3) Perishable foods.This is not the first time that unclear communication in words has spelled financial disaster for a company. In one typo horror story, a 124-year-old company was dissolved after U.K. government agency Companies House wrongly stated that Taylor Sons Ltd. had gone into liquidation in 2009. In fact, it wasTaylor Son Ltd. without the s that had gone into liquidation. The error was corrected in three days, but by that time, orders had been canceled, contracts had been lost and credit had been withdrawn.