January 25, 2005 | Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Kimberly Ashton, Staff Writer
Greenfield — A Franklin Superior Court judge ruled this week that Millivision is not required to pay a former employee back wages because he had agreed to release the company from its debt to him.
Design engineer David Gordon of Greenfield filed a lawsuit in September 2003 against the South Deerfield company, claiming they owed him thousands in back pay.
Millivision specializes in developing technology for use in non-invasive contraband-detection devices.
During 1998 and 1999, Gordon and other employees agreed to forgo salary from time to time to keep the company viable.
Gordon left the company in January 2000 but went to work for Millivision Inc. in August of that year. The following year he was laid off. Later in 2001, Millivision secured financing and Gordon was rehired.
A condition of employment, however, was that he drop any back-pay claims against the company in return for 33,000 shares of stock in Millivision, which he did. He left Millivision in April 2003.
The judge ruled that since Gordon signed the release, the company didn’t owe him any money and that he waited longer than the allowed three-year limit to sue them.
Gordon had also sued his supervisor, Richard Huguenin, the company’s chief scientist. Huguenin’s lawyer, Paul Weinberg of Northampton, said his client is very relieved the judge ruled in his favor.
