Dear Mr. K:

You asked:

Greetings!

I am given to understand from your credentials, that you are a master grammarian, particularly where the topic intersects with the practice of law.

Recently, I ran across a phrase in one of my legal books that presented me with a problem. The phrase was:

“Any person or any officer or employee of any bank or corporation who…..”

The sentence finishes with “…does a certain thing..etc.”

My question to you, is:

Are all the three entities (person, officer, employee) identified, associated with either a bank or a corporation in this sentence fragment, or is the person separate and apart and not part of a bank or corporation?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thank you

The answer to your question is in the use of the word “Any.”

The first “any” modifies person. It does not modify any other word because the second “any” immediately follows the first conjunction (“or”). So the first part of the compound subject is “any person.” However, the second “any” modifies both “officer” and “employee”; therefore, both officer and employee refer to the bank.

Here is the way to parse the meaning:
If you want all three entities to be associated with the bank or corporation, you would have written: “Any person, officer, or employee associated with any bank or corporation…” You would not be able to say “Any person, officer, or employee of any bank…” because “person of any bank” does not have meaning in standard English.

The meaning in standard English of the example you sent would be that “any person” does not have to be associated with the bank or corporation. It sounds like the sentence is trying to cover both personal and corporate liability.

I hope this helps.

Dear Mr. K:

You wrote:

Would it be safe to say that the meaning of the sentance fragment is at best, ambiguous?

I am not sure that I would say it was ambiguous. There appears to be only one way to parse it correctly. However, there are probably several ways to rewrite it to make it clearer.