Operator of Ohio Valley Medical Center Facing WARN Act Class Action Over Sept. 2019 Shutdown

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The entity that ran the Ohio Valley Medical Center faces a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the company failed to provide employees with federally required notice of impending layoffs before shuttering the hospital in September 2019.

Alleging violations of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, the lawsuit claims Alecto Healthcare Services, LLC, doing business as Alecto Healthcare Services Wheeling, “blindsided” workers at the 218-bed West Virginia hospital despite possessing “the actual knowledge that a closure was likely.” After Alecto, who the suit notes was one of the state’s top 30 largest private employers before its closure, met with West Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Crouch in July 2019 to “explain the extreme distress” the facility was under, Ohio Valley Medical Center closed and laid off its workforce in September, the case says.

Though Alecto reportedly informed workers in August 2019 of Ohio Valley Medical Center’s impending shutdown, the notice the company provided was deficient and untimely, the lawsuit claims. According to the suit, while Alecto represented that roughly 736 positions would be eliminated, that the hospital would close in early October, and that layoffs would occur at least 60 days after notice was sent out, a number of Ohio Valley Medical Center workers were terminated “significantly before that time.”

The WARN Act stipulates that employers who employ a certain number of full-time workers and who intend to eliminate the jobs of at least 50 of those workers must provide at least 60 days’ notice of the impending terminations. Additionally, the law, a component of ERISA, mandates that employers must pay workers’ respective salaries, wages, commissions, bonuses, and accrued holiday and vacation pay for 60 working days following their layoffs.

Despite the WARN Act’s 60-day notice requirement, the lawsuit says Ohio Valley Medical Center employees received at most 26 days’ notice of the impending mass layoff.

According to the case, all of Ohio Valley Medical Center’s layoffs happened within a 30-day period from when initial notice was sent to workers. After Alecto announced on September 3, 2019 that the hospital would close and suspend all services, employees experienced “an involuntary, continuous, and ongoing employment loss” for a period of at least six months, the case claims.