Last antecedent rule

The last antecedent rule is a controversial rule for interpreting statutes and contracts. It holds that referential and qualifying phrases, where no contrary intention appears, refer solely to the last antecedent. Judges have both applied and rejected it on similar facts. It is typically bound by common sense and is flexible enough to avoid an application that would involve an absurdity or do violence to the plain intent of the language. The rule in its familiar form was stated by Jabez Gridley Sutherland, an attorney, legislator and judge, in his 1891 treatise Statutes and Statutory Construction, and he himself qualified it and preferred a plain, common-sense reading of a statute. A more formulaic approach treats a comma separating a qualifying phrase from a series of antecedents as showing that the phrase applies to all of them, and Kenneth A. Adams, author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, has criticized that approach as applied inconsistently. A contrary canon applies a clause to all the words preceding it when it fits each of them equally.