I was having a problem for a while where posts older than 7 days would start throwing errors during publishing and prevent index pages from updating. I had been using the relative date function for the post creation dates during the summary display. The error was showing a line number from a .pl file responsible for computing the relative dates.
For some reason, as soon as a post reached the 7 day old mark the function would fail. The solution for me was to remove the relative date format. I did not have time to debug the perl code and I’m not very familiar with perl in general. If someone at MT happens to see this, it might be something to look into.
Thanks for a great product!
Reported on Movable Type 4.2

Sounds like a plugin, not Movable Type itself. Why don't you post a complete copy of the error message you saw? That should explain what's going on.
This is the error:
Eval failure: Can't locate object method "user" via package "MT" at ../lib/MT/Util.pm line 260.
It is not a plug in. The template tag in use is:
I can confirm that the relative attribute for date tags is causing the error. I noticed it because scheduled entries didn't get published anymore. I started using the relative attribute 8 days ago.
This is the error notice in Activity Log: An error occurred while publishing scheduled entries: Can't locate object method "user" via package "MT" at lib/MT/Util.pm line 260.
I disabled plugins (MT-Twitter and Bookmarks), but the error persisted. Then I removed the relative attribute from date tags on the index template. Scheduled tasks now work again.