The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided
that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure
necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know
that, too bad for them.
From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.
Contracts are already interpreted against the drafter(s), because they are in the best position to have written their intentions. Businesses are also held to the express language of a contract because they are regarded as having the resources to hire legal advice. However, individuals are not held to the same standards, because they usually lack the knowledge, experience, and resources to understand the import of the language in most contracts, expecially those drafted by lawyers for large businesses. In such case, they will simply be required to show that their interpretation of the contract was reasonable.
The authors did not write the Amazon publishing contracts. Most of them aren't lawyers, and a lot of them may not even be college graduates. They cannot, and legally will not be held to a strict reading of the contract if they can prove that they reasonably believed that the Lendle program was limited (or marketed as limited) to friends and family of the ebook purchaser.
BTW, that's not the most expensive comma. Check out the comma in the Cleveland Browns contract that cost Cleveland a Superbowl-winning franchise. (The current Browns are an expansion team.)
http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and...
Here's a choice paragraph:
From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.