Help
jallerton, on 2011-December-18, 11:44, said:
I find this difficult to believe. It seems clear that the lawmakers intended "unrelated to the infraction" to attach to (only) "serious error" because they have gone out of their way to order the words in the way they did. In fact a construction of the type you suggest: "has contributed to its own damage by a serious error or by wild or gambling action (unrelated to the infraction)" is ambiguous as it is not clear whether the wording in brackets relates to the part preceding the "or" or not.
And there are other possible ways to reword it that would completely resolve the ambiguity. I find it hard to believe that they would reword it from something that (supposedly) doesn't mean what was intended to something that would be ambiguous. It's only through the history of the current construction that someone might expect that the new wording intends the parenthetical to apply to both branches of the OR.