Damages: Forget about your P’s and Q’s . . . Mind your commas!

As reported last week the New York Times, there was a surprising damages outcome in a dispute between Canada’s largest cable television provider, Rogers Communications of Toronto, and the phone company Bell Aliant. The suite was regarding the phone company’s attempt to cancel a contract governing Rogers Communications’ use of telephone poles. Rogers communications argued that five year pole contracts renew automatically for another five years unless given cancellation notice before the final year of the original contract.

The end of the dispute came down to a single sentence in the contract: “This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

The regulator believed the second comma meant that the part of the sentence describing the one-year notice for cancellation applied to both the five-year term as well as its renewal. Therefore, the phone company was allowed to escape the contract after as little as one year and did not have to pay damages of 1 million Canadian dollars (88,000 USD).