Comment 1 for bug 1277655

> spews this error to the syslog:
> monit: Error reading pid from file

Is this is the only error you have seen in the log file? Or there are others?

I think, there is - e.g. monit tries to restart this service. If this is the case - this is expected. You should limit the number of restarts for this service, like this:
-->8--
if 2 restarts within 3 cycles then unmonitor
-->8--
And you should fix this service - pid file shouldn't be empty!