Been going through the epub I'm working on and have been coming across > in a bunch of areas where it has taken the class from the <i> tag and moved it to the <p> so I am not sure what the heck is going on. Maybe I was working on it too late last night and screwed something up myself. If it repeats with another book I'll create an issue on the tracker for sure.
Thinking about it, I wonder if I did this: <p <i class="italix">>
As it doesn't happen with every instance and I was doing a copy/paste into.
[EDIT]
Just did a test and that does indeed appear to be my above problem but still doesn't explain my first post as there were no telltale >... will keep looking.