Spent 3 hours finding a missing comma in a 50-page client contract

My paralegal and I were going crazy over a clause that made zero sense, turns out I forgot a comma in the liability section and it flipped the whole meaning. Has anyone else had a tiny grammar error blow up a deal negotiation?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel_lane301mo ago

It is wild how one little comma can completely change the legal meaning of a clause like that. I had a similar thing happen in a lease agreement where a missing comma made it sound like the landlord was responsible for things they clearly weren't. Did your client catch it, or did your team spot it right before sending it over?

pat_coleman1mo ago

Man, it's crazy how much those tiny punctuation marks matter everywhere, not just in legal stuff. I've noticed it in text messages where a missing period makes someone sound angry, or in recipes where a misplaced comma literally changes the order of ingredients. Once you start looking for it, you see it messing up communication all over the place.