Government Senator Walton Brown is likely to settle his legal row with a former employee out of court.

The Junior Education Minister appeared in Magistrates' Court yesterday regarding a civil claim from Christen Pears for more than $10,000 in unpaid wages, health bills and other expenses.

He and lawyer Shawn Crockwell, representing Ms Pears, were asked by Magistrate Tyrone Chin to take five or ten minutes outside of the courtroom to try to come to a private agreement. They returned soon after to say a deal had been thrashed out, providing Ms Pears, who now lives in Australia and was not in court, agreed.

Ms Pears, former editor of the Bermuda Network News website, won a default judgment against Sen. Brown's now defunct MediaCom company last June. Yesterday's hearing was to determine how the money would be paid to her. At the start of the hearing, Mr. Crockwell told Mr. Chin that Sen. Brown gave a personal undertaking in e-mails to pay her what she was owed.

"We are saying we think Sen. Brown needs to personally figure out a way to deal with these arrears," he said, adding that his client wanted a court order to determine a payment plan.

He quoted an e-mail from the PLP politician to Ms Pears which revealed that MediaCom never generated sufficient funds to pay her salary, with her wages instead coming from his Research Innovations market research firm.

Sen. Brown told the court he did not understand how he could be held personally responsible when the judgment was against MediaCom, a company he opted to fold.

He added: "It is the case that when MediaCom did run into difficulty I spoke to Ms Pears. I did say to her that I would personally undertake to ensure that she got the payment that was entitled to."

He said he made two monthly payments to Ms Pears, a British guest worker, for $2,500 each, before she decided she wanted more money each month. "When I did not pay more, she took out legal action," he said. "I was paying her out of a moral obligation."

Mr. Chin said if a corporate entity was operating insolvently then the officers of the company could be held personally liable for the debts and could not necessarily hide behind a "corporate veil" to avoid that liability.

Sen. Brown said the company was not "knowingly insolvent" and that when it got into financial difficulties he shut it down. "There is no ruse," he added. "There is no veil that I'm attempting to hide behind. I undertook to ensure that Ms Pears received the money she was owed. I was making good faith payments."

Mr. Chin encouraged both parties to negotiate, rather than keep returning to court. After the case was briefly stood down, Mr. Crockwell told him: "We have come to a provisional agreement."

He said if his client agreed then the matter could be resolved without a further hearing. Both he and Sen. Brown said afterwards that the amount settled on would not be disclosed.