We prove by counterexample that a large deviation principle established by Chen and Feng [{\em Comm. Statist. Theory Methods} {\bf 45} (2016), 400--412] in the framework of sublinear expectations is incorrect. That implies that the rate function cannot, in general, be obtained by computing the Fenchel transform of the cumulant generating function, as is the case for ordinary probabilities. We derive a corrected version of that result and show that the original presentation holds under a stronger independence assumption.