Use a for block:

=pod

It's a single quote that does it.

=for borked_emacs_perlmode '

=cut
[download]

Or use a comment:

=pod

It's a single quote that does it.

=cut

#' without this emacs w/borked perlmode gets upset
[download]

I also like the regex version of this problem. If you want to match a simple quoted string many people would do: /(["'])((?:(?!\1).)+)\1/s but /([""''])((?:(?!\1).)+)(\1)/s does the same thing and doesn't cause highlighting editors problems.

BTW, personally I would include the snide comments. IMO it will needle your colleague enough that he fixes the real problem, that his highlighting is b0rked. :-)