MARTINS FERRY — Over 200 former East Ohio Regional Hospital employees — more than half of the workforce at the closed healthcare facility in Martins Ferry — joined a class action lawsuit against their former employer.

The hospital has not yet responded.

Lawyers from the Moundsville firm Gold, Khourey & Turak and the Columbus firm Barkan Meizlish DeRose Cox joined forces on the suit against EORH for failing to give employees the federally required 60-day Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice of its closure and for not paying owed wages, among other violations.

The case has left the two teams busy investigating each of the allegations and the “lots of moving pieces” that come with such a large client base.

The lawsuit is approaching a deadline Monday, when hospital leadership will have to respond to each of the allegations outlined in the suit. The plaintiffs’ lawyers had not heard anything from EORH’s administration or their legal counsel as of Friday.

“We have no response from them,” said co-counsel from the Moundsville firm Michelle Marinacci. “There is no attorney, law firm or representative of the defendants or any of the defendants themselves who have reached out to us.”

However, Columbus co-counsel Bob DeRose said it is unlikely that the hospital will decline to respond before midnight May 12.

“That opens up a whole other universe of problems, but we don’t think that will be the case,” he said.

Lawyers met with former employees in two town hall-style sessions last week, where they got to know the clients and updated them about the case.

They also learned more about additional allegations that have now been added to the complaint — such as the hospital taking premiums from paychecks but not funding employee health insurance with them. They also added claims from employees who had lunch hours deducted but were forced to work through their lunch hours.

Marinacci said there was “outrage” among the former employees they met.

“They’ve devoted their lives to this facility, the patients of the Ohio Valley. They gave themselves to try to bring this hospital back and keep it going, and they feel taken advantage of,” Marinacci said. “They were made to work without pay, and they don’t know when their pay is going to come. They definitely feel taken advantage of and lied to.”

The facility previously closed in 2019, when then-owner Alecto Healthcare Services shut it down along with sister facility Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling. OVMC has since been demolished.

Dr. John Johnson, a psychiatrist who owns and operates other medical facilities, purchased EORH in spring 2020 and reopened it in February 2021, bringing hope that it would remain a viable health care provider for years to come. It closed again this year on March 20.

Marinacci emphasized that not only are the employees feeling shaken from the sudden closure of the hospital, but it has continued to impact the surrounding community as well.

Unemployment services did not have an opportunity to prepare for all of the claims coming in at once, and many patients have been left without access to prescriptions and test results.

Former employees are still struggling to pay bills and feed their families.

“That has the trickle down effect that you can imagine,” Marinacci said. “They can’t pay their bills. I know we have at least one client that we can only communicate with by email because she can’t pay for her phone anymore because she doesn’t have a job.”

It is out of the ordinary that the hospital has not yet responded to the suit with the deadline quickly approaching, DeRose said.

“It’s not uncommon for the defense to even ask for more time to answer the complaint, but to have their counsel not reach out and ask to talk to us is highly unusual,” he said.

Having over half of the potential clients sign on to the lawsuit so early in the process is also “remarkable.”

“Already having 200 people signed up before the answer is filed is pretty remarkable without getting notice from the court,” DeRose said. “It’s a testament to people wanting to get answers.”

Marinacci echoed his sentiment.

“You don’t normally have this outpouring this early on,” she said.