Postal Service v. Konan · ¶42

First, Konan argues that the postal exception’s “negligent transmission” category narrows the meaning of “miscar- riage” and “loss.”She argues that the qualifier “negligent” in the term “negligent transmission” implicitly qualifies the other two terms.But Congress intentionally limited the “negligent” qualifier to “transmission” and did not use it to qualify “loss” or “miscarriage.”Konan’s “argument seems to assume that pairing a broad statutory term with a narrow one shrinks the broad one, but there is no such general usage.”S. D. Warren Co. v. Maine Bd. of Environmental Protection, 547 U. S. 370, 379 (2006).Just like “a limiting clause or phrase . . . should ordinarily be read as modifying only the noun or phrase that it immediately follows,” an ad- jective before the final noun in a list cannot be transplanted to qualify the preceding nouns.Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U. S. 20, 26 (2003).We…

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