A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit filed by three former employees of now-shuttered Yadkin Valley Community Hospital against the hospital's former operator, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
The Yadkinville, N.C.-based hospital unexpectedly closed May 22, 2015. Yadkin County owns the building the hospital operated out of, but privately owned CAH Acquisition 10 LLC in Kansas City, Mo., leased and operated the facility. The company was scheduled to run the hospital until July 31, 2015.
Last September, three former hospital employees brought a lawsuit under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act against CAH and its parent company. The WARN Act requires employers to give workers at least 60 days advance written notice of plans to close a facility or cut a large number of jobs. CAH never filed notice with city officials or the North Carolina Commerce Department as required by the WARN Act.
The employees asked the court to grant class-action status to their suit, and Judge William Osteen Jr. ruled in their favor Monday. There could be as many as 150 class-action members, according to the report.
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