Amid lawsuit, Bangor social service firm files Chapter 11
Getchell Agency Inc., a Bangor-based social service provider, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid a court case with former employees and growing tension with the state over overnight pay for in-home caregivers.
In a letter penned to Gov. Paul LePage, Getchell Agency’s CEO Rena Getchell said she believes that officials within the state government forced her to reorganize the social service provider’s debt through bankruptcy, according to the Bangor Daily News.
“I made the decision to file for bankruptcy after long hours of deliberation and legal consultation, and I do so with a heavy heart,” Getchell wrote in her letter to LePage. “But I cannot continue to move forward shackled by mounting legal fees and under constant threat of multi-million-dollar judgments over which only the state has control.”
The mounting legal fees are from a class-action lawsuit two former employees filed against the company in 2013, alleging that the social service provider failed to pay house managers for time they spent overnight at the company’s roughly 50 group homes. Another 96 employees have since joined in the lawsuit.
In Getchell’s letter to the governor, the CEO said that the Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t provide enough funding to give clients the around-the-clock supervision the department determined they should be provided.
As part of the lawsuit, the lawyers of current and former employees of Getchell Agency are seeking a $6.4 million attachment to real estate and personal property owned by the social service provider and Getchell.
In its bankruptcy filing, Getchell Agency claimed between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities and up to $50,000 in assets.
Getchell said that there are no plans to shut down the agency, and that the lawsuit was the sole reason for reorganizing finances under Chapter 11 protection.
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