By not hiring a lawyer, Rocky Hill optometrist Robert Aube might have thought he was saving a bit of time and money when, in March 2007, he wrote a letter to his optical lab manager, Norma Cruz, about her employment. What was supposed to be a simplification has become a story about the limits of labor-saving devices in employment contracts.
To date, unsnarling this do-it-yourself agreement has cost the doctor $80,000 in legal fees, as he tries to make the point that he never had a binding contract with Cruz and shouldn’t have to pay her the $60,000 she was awarded in a wrongful termination lawsuit. The state Supreme Court recently gave Aube a partial victory, ordering a new trial with additional evidence after concluding the letter agreement alone was too ambiguous to be enforceable.
