Well, it wasn’t what you posted petit, althoguh thanks for the time. You gave me the idea to replace bits of code that differred from the default comment form (I should have done that initially. ><), which worked. I just Took the default of comments.php and re-worked it instead of using the one from the theme.
Sabrina, you might try looking at that…see if the default comments.php file works in place of the one from your theme. It might be an error with the comment form.