Thursday, August 10, 2006

Comma costs a company $2.13 million.

I love this story. A misplaced comma cost Rogers Communications, a utility firm, a ton of money, and they couldn't argue their way out of it.

Rogers was dumbfounded. The company said it never would have signed a contract to use roughly 91,000 utility poles that could be cancelled on such short notice. Its lawyers tried in vain to argue the intent of the deal trumped the significance of a comma. “This is clearly not what the parties intended,” Rogers said in a letter to the CRTC.
"But we didn't mean that!" is not much of a defense in court, evidently.
(Now with extra added linky goodness.)

5 comments:

Kathy said...

No linky? :)

Shocho said...

Do I have to do EVERYTHING for you people? Okay yeah, I forgot. Now it's there, through the magic of the Intra Nets.

Major Rakal said...

I'm so glad it wasn't just me. I kept running my mouse over random words hunting for the link and wondering why I couldn't find one.

That contract, must have been written by the same, person who edited those documents I've been re-editing at, work. The, random acts of comma-ization are driving me, crazy.

Trundling Grunt said...

Punctuation nazis all over the world are rubbing their hands with glee.

TheGirard said...

but...but... it seperates the cost and effect.