Oral pre-employment contract

during the interview phase prior to my employment, a employment contract that would guarantee me 3yr. salary plus benifits was discussed and the vice-pres. said "i have no problem with that" because he to has a 3yr. contract. it was indicated by me that due to my age and the very strong desire of this co. to hire me that i needed some assurance in case the co. faultered. this vp indicated he would have their co. atty. draw up a contract outlining my requests. this had never materialized and when questioned by me he stated the co. attys. are working on it and one time he said, "as we speak" and another time said "they have it all but 10% completed. i then said that if they don't finish it soon then i will have my atty. draw one up and he immediately said no, i will make sure they get it done. well, it never happened and i was laid off on feb.16,2001.
do i have any recourse? i always heard that oral contracts are binding. help, please.

Oral contract

There are some tricky issues here. First of all, was there an oral contract? If a reasonable person in your situation would believe from what the VP said, that the VP actually entered into a contract with you rather than merely saying he would have one drawn up, then there was an oral contract.

If there were an oral contract, then it would normally be barred by the statute of frauds, which provides that contracts for over one year must be in writing. However, your reliance on the contract and performance of the job COULD POSSIBLY take the contract out of the statute of frauds and the result would be a valid contract.

Another possibility is that there was an oral contract to have a written contract executed. If that is the case, there would be no problem with the statute of frauds, and if reasonable people would have understood that there was a contract to have a written contract drawn up, then that would be a binding contract. The VPs later promise to have the contract drawn up could also be a valid oral contract to do so.

I would advise you to discuss this with an employment or a contract specialist in your state. You very possibly have a good case for breach of contract.