The Company Asked A Court To Make Me Sign

The complaint called my refusal to assign the agreement deliberate interference with a sale.

It asked for $2.4 million in damages. An attached motion asked a judge to order me to restore supply and sign whatever papers were needed to transfer the growers' agreement.

I read that last request standing beside my kitchen sink.

The basil pot had reached its blue line. For once, I forgot to empty the saucer.

I called Linnea.

"Is this really from the company?"

"Yes," she said. "The board authorized it before the source report. They haven't voted to drop it."

"Even now?"

"Some directors think the supply rights can still be recovered. They see that as separate from Quentin's conduct."

She sounded tired.

"I'm running shifts, Saira. I don't control litigation."

The company had a lawyer who argued that years of paying for fiber and supporting my work had given it rights beyond the words on the page.

I needed a lawyer of my own.

Julia Morse met me in a small office near downtown Rutland. She charged a $1,500 retainer and agreed to bill in stages. I paid it from what remained of my checking account.

"Don't write Quentin back," she said.

"I haven't heard from him."

My phone lit up before I finished the sentence.

His message offered to make the lawsuit go away if I signed the assignment and a statement saying the supply interruption had been my mistake.

"Now you have," Julia said.

She saved the message with its date and time.

I brought the green folder, the termination letter, and my employment agreement. I also brought the meeting notes Mara and Odette had approved.

Julia read the list of excluded property.

"Did anyone later amend this?"

"No."

"Did you ever promise unconditional assignment?"

"No. I offered the review."

She put a tab beside that offer.

Then she gave me a yellow pad.

"Write what you remember. Leave a blank where you don't remember."

"Even if it makes me look careless?"

"Especially then. We can work with a blank. We can't work with something you filled in to sound certain."

I wrote down the loading door, the stopped mixer, and the exact question I had asked about incoming releases. I left the time of my first call to Odette blank until I checked my phone record. It was a small thing, but it let me stop trying to carry every fact in my head.

"Then we show what you actually did. Every step."

The cooperative hired its own counsel and joined the case to protect its rights. Its position was simple: I could not sign away terms that also belonged to the growers.

Odette supplied the original approval minutes, membership vote, and storage records. Her binder had a table of contents and a receipt for every mailed notice.

"People think farming is mostly weather," she told Julia. "Weather never asks you for a duplicate invoice."

The hearing was set for late April at the Vermont Superior Court's civil division in Rutland.

Until then, I counted money and hours.

I took two small fiber-testing jobs unrelated to Hemlock. One paid $640. The other paid $880. I bought no new clothes. When my car needed tires, I had the shop price a safe used pair.

Anger came easiest at night.

I would think of Quentin's polished shoes beside my wet boots, and the way Luis had stopped the mixer when he heard the word assistant.

Then I would get up and check the pots.

Some of my early blends had split at the rim. Others held water too long. I had kept them because a failed pot still taught me something if its label stayed attached.

I tried to treat my own bad days with that much patience.

Julia requested the records behind the company's claim. Hemlock's lawyers supplied them under the court schedule. Linnea preserved the originals and answered questions through counsel.

One record was the acquisition disclosure list.

It described the cooperative agreement as Company-Owned, Freely Assignable, No Further Consent Required.

Quentin had signed it twelve days before firing me.

Another was an email from the outside lawyer who had reviewed my hiring papers four years earlier. It warned that employment alone would not transfer my personal supply agreement.

Quentin had replied, Understood. Site Permission Is Sufficient For Now.

"For now," I said.

Julia read the reply without comment. Then she added another tab.

The day before the hearing, Quentin called from a number I did not know. I answered because I was waiting for a testing client.

"You can still save your reputation," he said.

"Please speak to my lawyer."

"A judge won't care about your little green folder."

I looked at it on the table, beside an unpaid utility bill.

"We'll find out tomorrow," I said, and ended the call.

At four thirty, Julia forwarded the company's final witness statement.

Quentin had sworn that I had never warned him an independent review was required.