What goes up must come down, right? Not so in employment law, according to Daniel Schwartz of Shipman & Goodwin. He outlines Stratford v. Winterbottom [PDF], a recent Connecticut appellate court decision in which the court held an employer did not have permission to reduce an employee’s salary when the employment contract allowed for an increase but was silent as to the subject of decreases.
“By including increases but not mentioning decreases, the employer is reading too much into the agreement; it simply does not have the power to do so,” says Schwartz, referring to a post on the issue from Ken Adams, author of a contract-drafting style manual. Adams says a grant of discretion to do one thing doesn’t equal a prohibition against doing the opposite, but there’s also a presumption that the inclusion of one thing implies the exclusion of others, namely, the converse.
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