A DEDICATION BY COLIN POWELL

[OriB117]

[redacted]

[RonPurewal]

sorry, nope-- like the other one, this problem is a copy (with just a few words changed) of copyrighted GMAT material.

this time, though, it's even worse: this problem is, essentially, a stolen version of one of the old ETS GMAT Paper Test problems.
the old paper tests aren't even relevant anymore, at least not for SC; most of the old paper-test SC problems depend on concepts that are no longer tested on the exam (mostly because they introduce a strong bias in favor of american test takers).

...so, can't use this one either, because the paper tests are a banned source on here (and you shouldn't use them anyway because they are no longer relevant).

[RonPurewal]

incidentally, your original notion about modifiers is mistaken, as you can establish by looking at #25 in the OG (13th / 2015 edition).

whenever you formulate a "rule" -- especially if it's as weirdly specific as the one you had here -- ALWAYS do your homework. i.e., just look through the correctly written official sentences, and see whether any of them violate your "rule". if you can find an official answer that violates it, then ... guess what.

[RonPurewal]

more generally, SC is NOT a test of weirdly specific, nitpicky rules; in fact, it is pretty much exactly the opposite.
if you've formulated something like "you can't put X thing in Y construction along with Z thing when A thing is in B construction" ... nope.

if you formulate something like this, it's most likely not a thing in the first place (as in the case of your original question here)... and, even if it is, there's no way you'll need it on this exam. the point of GMAT SC is to test relationships that are both very common and very general.