MARTINS FERRY — A Moundsville-based law firm filed a class action lawsuit against East Ohio Regional Hospital, claiming the hospital began mass layoffs before shuttering without notice, leaving hundreds of healthcare workers without jobs and many without weeks of earned pay.

Medical malpractice and insurance dispute lawyer Michelle Marinacci is heading the suit at Gold, Khourey and Turak. She said the firm started receiving calls from concerned employees and working on the lawsuit when the hospital began a series of layoffs several weeks before its March 21 closure.

GKT then reached out to the law firm of Barkan Meizlish DeRose Cox in Columbus, Ohio, because of its expertise in employment law. EORH owner and CEO Dr. John Johnson is also based in Columbus.

“They saw merit to these cases so we started talking to them and teaming up with them to see what we could do to help out the employees,” Marinacci said.

As of Monday afternoon, Marinacci said more than 50 former EORH employees had reached out to opt into the lawsuit.

A main claim, according to the lawsuit, is that Johnson did not provide the federally required 60–day notice to employees that the facility would be closing in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.

Hospital leadership could have easily anticipated the closure and layoffs, Marinacci said, but instead, the lawsuit claims Johnson and hospital administrators encouraged employees to continue working and assured them things would return to normal.

“Many people were working without pay and [hospital administration] didn’t even have the courtesy to tell them directly that they were shutting the doors, they found out on social media and in the news,” she said.

This lack of notice and the sudden unemployment of several hundred people is harmful to not only the employees, but the entire community, Marinacci said.

“When you have a mass layoff, it’s devastating to everyone,” she said. “Not only do the employees lose their livelihood, the community loses that income and they also have to absorb hundreds of people without jobs.”

Many employees went weeks without pay and have still not received insurance benefits and PTO they are owed, according to the lawsuit. At a minimum, Marinacci said, former EORH employees are entitled to receive the wages they earned.

While this lawsuit is focused on what the former employees are owed financially, other entities, like the Martins Ferry Police Department and Belmont County Prosecutor’s Office, are looking into other potential criminal aspects of Johnson and the hospital’s actions.

“This action is just on behalf of the employees to get their wages and get these statutory benefits they are entitled to,” Marinacci said. “We are focused on protecting the workers and we don’t have to consider all the criminal regulatory violations that the prosecutor and attorney general might have to look at,” she said.

Since the lawsuit is specifically an employment class action suit, former employees must reach out to opt in to being included rather than being automatically included like in other class action suits, Marinacci emphasized.

Former employees can consent to being included by visiting either one of the GKT or Barkan Meizlish DeRose Cox’s websites or Facebook pages, or by calling either of the firms.

GKT has been representing citizens of the Ohio Valley for over 50 years, Marinacci noted. It was important to them to take on this case and speak up for the former EORH employees.

“It’s just the right thing to do. Sometimes you do things not because you think you’re going to profit from it in the end — we don’t know where this is going to go — but because it’s the right thing to do and these employees need someone to speak on their behalf,” she said.