Big payday for the nerds, and some validation

Behold the mighty comma — arguably the most common of punctuation marks, though oft misused, misunderstood and misplaced, and subject to roughly a bajillion rules — and one comma, or rather lack of a comma, just got its day in court.

Oakhurst Dairy in Portland, Maine, just settled in court to pay $5 million in back pay to its delivery drivers because of the way a state law is punctuated — and because at least five of the company’s drivers are big nerds.

Here’s the deal, Maine state law says businesses do not have to pay overtime for these duties: “the canning, processing, pres...