Perhaps you have experienced the impatience of a judge as you try to wriggle out of a parking or speeding ticket.
So consider the victory recently when an Ohio woman persuaded an appeals court to throw out her conviction because of a missing comma in a city ordinance. The recent case led copy editors and punctuation perfectionists to rejoice on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Washington Post urged readers to “take a minute today and celebrate Judge Robert A. Hendrickson and the 12th District Court of Appeals in Ohio.” The Post’s headline called the ruling “a victory for punctuation, sanity.”
Andrea Cammelleri successfully appealed a conviction in a West Jefferson, Ohio, Municipal Court for leaving her 1993 Ford pickup parked on a village street for more than 24 hours. According to The Columbus Dispatch:
She pointed out that the ordinance prohibited “any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle” from daylong parking and argued that her truck is not a “motor vehicle camper.”
The village argued that the lack of a comma separating motor vehicle from camper was a typo and did not invalidate her violation. But the court sided with Cammelleri. Grammar counts, the judges said.
“If the village desires a different reading, it should amend the ordinance and insert a comma,” Judge Robert A. Hendrickson wrote.
‘Grammar rules!’
Cammelleri’s victory was gleefully noted by news media across the English-speaking world. “Grammar rules!” New York’s Daily News proclaimed.
West Jefferson reportedly will have to reimburse Cammelleri about $1,500 for the costs of towing and legal fees, the paper noted. The woman launched her crusade for better punctuation after her boyfriend noticed the missing comma, she told the Daily News.
“I was told, 'Don’t fight City Hall’,” Cammelleri said. “I’d never win. I did.”
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Others saw a possible career move for a punctuation pugilist willing to take her battle to an appeals court. “With such a success, Ms Cammelleri should definitely consider plugging a gap in the market as a consultant in parking fine appeals,” suggested the UK news site Metro.
Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, saw issues in the case that extend beyond punctuation. In his blog, he called the Ohio ruling a small victory for “textualists,” who insist on the literal meaning of the law, over “intentionalists,” who say courts should apply the legislature’s intention. Such questions arose in a recent U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the Affordable Care Act.
“The [Ohio] court did right,” Frey wrote. “It applied plain meaning. It refused to enforce some secret, unexpressed intent or purpose, and went with the text.”
'Hanged on a comma’
At least one observer perceived a mirror image of the trial of Sir Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist who was said to be hanged in 1916 because of the placement of a comma in the 14th-century Treason Act. (He was arrested for seeking German aid for the Irish cause during World War I, so there’s also that. For the history of the case, see here.)
Sir Roger Casement: hanged on a comma. Andrea Cammelleri: cleared on a comma. Must read. https://t.co/BLQlZEH3U6
— Ben Nimmo (@benimmo) July 2, 2015
Others were content simply to savor Cammelleri’s victory for proper punctuation. A Scrips Media piece was headlined, “How understanding basic punctuation got an Ohio woman out of a parking ticket.”
“The moral of the story?” Scrips stated. “Knowledge really is power. More specifically, knowledge of proper punctuation can directly translate into the power to successfully dispute parking tickets. At least in Ohio.”
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