Yesterday, Affinity Medical Center came back with "a full bore" answer and counterclaim to a complaint filed by the City of Massillon and others against Affinity and its parent company Quorum.
Readers, to get up to speed, should familiarize themselves to The Stark County Political Report's treatment of the effort by Massillon government and their allies in trying to extend the time period within which Affinity/Quorum "actually" shuts down Massillon's only hospital.
Here are links to two previous SCPR blogs:
In a quick reading of the answer and counterclaim, it appears to the SCPR that Massillon and the city's fellow complainants may "rue the day" that the decision was made to proceed with litigation against Affinity/Quorum for in addition to an estimated annual loss of $600,000, more or less, in income and property taxes; the city may be flirting with a counterclaim judgment of would further stress city finances.
Although Massillon is said to have several million in carryover funds from the 2017 to 2018 budget, the sustained loss of the nearly certain loss tax revenues going forward will likely eat away of the carryover quicker than government officials in Massillon might now think.
If, on top of the annual revenue loss, the filing of what some in the legal community thinks was an ill-advised invoking of the Stark County Common Pleas Court as leverage to force an unwanted (by Affinity) extended time of staying open at the cost (according to the Defendants' answer) potentially more millions of dollars might result in a judgement on the Defendant's counterclaim that makes the $600,000 annual loss seem like small potatoes.
In future blogs, the SCPR plans to cover a more detailed journalistic analysis of likely outcome(s) of this litigation now that the complaint/answer/counterclaim have been filed with the court.
Here is a copy the entire answer and counterclaim:
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