Maybe you thought opinions that relied on grammar were outliers. Not so. Here are three 2025 cases where courts based their opinions on rules of grammar.
A Deep Dive into Adjectives, Adverbs and Prepositions
From inside his Honda, the appellant/defendant fired a gun, striking the victim while she was in her Dodge. It seems like the North Carolina legislature was pretty thorough when it drafted the relevant statute defining the felony, covering shooting from inside a vehicle, shooting into a vehicle, and shooting within a vehicle. The defendant argued that he could only be guilty if both he and the victim were in the same vehicle.
In North Carolina v. Jenkins, dated August 6, 2025, the appellate court took 12 pages to discuss the definition of “within” and which person or firearm needed to be within which vehicle. The court said it was using ordinary rules of grammar. Citing Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner’s book, “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” the court also applied canons of interpretation, namely the last-antecedent canon, the series-qualifier canon, and the nearest-reasonable-referent canon.
That is a boatload of canons.
The court described the applicable statute as “conspicuously detailed.”
It “specifically forbids anyone from firing a gun using three discrete adjunct adverbial prepositional phrases, from within, toward, and not within, which collectively denote an interaction between two distinct person[s] … from within any enclosure” and “not within that [same] enclosure.”
Reflecting on this granular analysis, I wondered whether the state’s brief actually discussed adjunct adverbial prepositional phrases.
Because the statute was “clear and unambiguous,” the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss due to an incorrect interpretation. Nonetheless, the sentence was vacated and the case was remanded for resentencing because he could have been sentenced under a different statute for the same conduct.
Capitalization
On April 29, 2025, an Ohio appellate court considered the effect of capitalization in In re Estate of Devine v. Monroe Soc. for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Kay Devine’s will bequeathed the remainder of her estate to “the chapter of the Society for Prevention to [sic] Cruelty to Animals which is located closest to my place of residence at the time of my death.”
Devine lived in Toledo, Ohio, where there were no chapters of the SPCA. In fact, the national SPCA has no chapters. The lower court ruled that the will was therefore ambiguous and the Toledo Humane Society would best carry out the testatrix’s intent. The Monroe, Michigan, SPCA appealed. The Monroe SPCA is approximately 28 miles north of Toledo.
The ambiguities identified in the bequest included the inexact name of the organization and the issue of what qualified as a chapter. In reversing the lower court decision, the court found:
Under common rules of grammar—and as a principle of legal writing—only proper nouns should be capitalized. [Citation omitted.] Usually, one may interpret a capitalized noun as referring to a specific person, place, or thing. [Citation omitted.] Notwithstanding this principle, the court placed no significance in the capitalization of “Society for Prevention [of] Cruelty to Animals.”
The appellate decision found that the trial court had ignored the language of the bequest, effectively rewriting the will. The case was remanded for reinterpretation to determine the intended beneficiary, presumably an organization that calls itself the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Just Use a Dictionary
In American Family Insurance Company v. NB Electric, dated January 21, 2025, a Minnesota appellate court parsed the word “construction” for its ruling on the applicable statute of limitations.
A homeowner hired contractors for a remodeling project in February 2020 and fired them in April 2021. New contractors were brought in, and they finished the work in July 2021. The homeowner’s insurance carrier sued the original contractors for defective construction in July 2023. The issue was whether the statute ran in April 2023 or July 2023.
The statute provided that suit had to be brought before “substantial completion, termination, or abandonment of the construction or the improvement to real property.”
The appellate court relied on an earlier Minnesota Supreme Court decision which employed three different dictionary sources. That opinion states that the term “construction” means “actions that are necessary to move a construction project toward completion.” In other words, to measure a statute of limitations, one must look at substantial completion, termination, or abandonment of the entire project, not an individual contractor.
The statute doesn’t refer to an individual contractor or even a person. The court rejected the contractor’s attempt to use terms of art that do not appear in the statute. Instead, they said they used the plain words of the statute and rules of grammar according to their common and approved usage.
What Do These Cases Mean for You?
Don’t underestimate the importance of precise grammar in your analyses and legal writing. When you must work with a statute or contract that might be ambiguous, look to grammar resources to determine how to manage the case.
This Happens More Often Than You May Think
Grammar Changes the Case Outcome — Again
Three SCOTUS Cases Where Grammar Made a Difference
Whereas, I Keep Telling Lawyers to Stop Writing Like This
It Is What It Is: Can You Plead That In Court?
More Writing Tips
Find more good ideas for improving your legal writing and communications skills in “Get to the Point” by Teddy Snyder.
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