I have a habit of reviewing the incoming data, separately from any TDD activities... gives me a feel for what things really look like and also helps me set up appropriate sample data. And so I found this condition and scanned the file to see what it looked like. My assessment was that the situation was not well-defined: I'd have had to parse the test in the <STAGEDIR> directives to see who entered/left the scene, and also processed the <SCENE> directives to set actors on stage to nil. That's a very complex situation and not guaranteed to be correct. briantemple also raised that question and we got the word back from Thoughtbot to ignore that case.