MANCHESTER — The lawsuit by the Journal Inquirer’s longtime finance chief against the company that publishes the newspaper and its owner has been settled.
“The matter has settled,” Marc P. Mercier, the lawyer representing plaintiff Walter “Rudy” Rudewicz in the lawsuit against Journal Publishing Co. Inc. and Neil Ellis wrote in a court document.
Rudewicz said today that there has been a “handshake agreement” settling the suit but no written agreement as yet. He declined to disclose the terms of the settlement.
“It was settled on terms I am very pleased with,” Ellis said today.
Rudewicz, whose positions at the JI have included general manager and chief financial officer, charged in the lawsuit, filed in Hartford Superior Court, that Ellis had said he planned to renege on deferred salary and termination agreements worth a total of more than $550,000.
Rudewicz, who still works at the paper, was seeking a prejudgment remedy of more than $966,000, which would require the defendants to set aside assets worth that much to pay any future judgment in the case.
The requested prejudgment remedy exceeded the amount of the payments Rudewicz claimed he was told wouldn’t be made because a legal basis for the suit was Connecticut’s law on failure to pay wages, which provides for recovery of twice any wage underpayment, plus costs and legal fees.
A preliminary discussion between the lawyers and a judge on the prejudgment remedy issue had been scheduled for Thursday.
Mercier asked in a court document dated Tuesday that the discussion be delayed for 30 days to give the parties time to complete the settlement agreement. Judge James T. Graham granted that request, court records show.
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