MIAMI—A woman who describes herself as a grammarian par excellence won a city lottery but refuses to cash the $500,000 prize check. She insists that because of a missing restrictive comma, she is open to litigation if she deposits it.
The check, issued by the Miami City Lottery Commission, is made out to “Grand Prize Winner Laura Sumner.” Mrs. Sumner, 47, a longtime corporate editor, says that upon being presented the check, she immediately noticed the glaringly missing comma after “winner” and so refused to cash it.
In the court filing, she argues that without the comma, the implication—if not the explicit meaning—is that there is more than one grand prize winner. Thus, others could claim to also be grand prize winners. She demands the check be reissued with the properly placed restrictive comma and with “the” added before “grand” so that the face of the check reads “The Grand Prize Winner, Laura Sumner,” thus grammatically (and therefore legally, in her opinion) eliminating any and all doubt that she is the sole grand prize winner.
Roger MacMillan, PhD, an Ivy League professor of English and current chairman of the Grammar Society of North America, says that comma or no comma, article or no article, he would have cashed the check in a heartbeat. He notes that although the inclusion of the comma and “the” are arguably more grammatically correct, “sometimes you really have to use your common sense instead of your comma sense.”
The Miami City Lottery Commission earlier said that it was not going to reissue the check to Mrs. Sumner. The commission has since punctuated its position on the matter by stating that if Mrs. Sumner does not cash the check within 6 months, the commission will ultimately be the grand prize winner—period.
