Federal bankruptcy Judge John K. Sherwood approved a severance package Friday for 2,500 New England Motor Freight employees who were laid off without notice when the company filed bankruptcy in mid-February.

Charles Ercole, partner at Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg LLP, and one of the attorneys representing the former employees, said the deal will keep both sides from having to go through a class-action lawsuit, which had been filed Feb. 14.

The employees argued the company violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act by not giving them 60 days notice of mass layoffs.

“Because of our WARN Act lawsuit, the severance package was increased at the last minute by 20 percent, (a total of $2.7 million), so that each employee will basically receive an additional week’s pay,” Ercole said in an email on Tuesday.

The deal means that every full-time employee, union and nonunion, will get eight weeks of fully paid health care benefits and at least 14.5 days pay, and up to five weeks of pay if employees had unused vacation and paid time off greater than two weeks.

NEMF filed Feb. 11 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced plans to wind down its operations. The move surprised many of the company’s employees, who were out of work by the end of that week.

The company had 36 trucking terminals throughout the mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Midwest, including one in Lehighton.

Around 200 people were employed at the Lehighton terminal, located along Mahoning Drive East. NEMF employed a total of 3,450 people nationwide.

Ercole said his firm had been directly retained by over 500 individual drivers, dockworkers, warehouseman, clerical employees and more since the shutdown. Debtors, he said, filed a motion to approve a less favorable severance package that required the employees to waive all claims including their WARN Act rights.

“The union had already agreed to that same package on behalf of its members,” Ercole added. “However, we indicated we would oppose any such a motion — and, as a result, debtors met and negotiated with us over three days before the hearing.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company reported assets of $100 million to $500 million and debts between $50 million and $100 million and $59 million owed to four banks as the company’s largest unsecured creditors.

Last year NEMF ranked as the 17th-largest “less-than-truckload” carrier in the country with revenue over $400 million. According to the state Department of Labor and Industry, it was in the top 25 largest employers in Carbon County for 2018.

“This is a good result under difficult circumstances,” Ercole said of the severance package. “Employees get money now and continued health benefits instead of waiting perhaps for years with no guarantee of success and/or whether there would be funds to pay for a larger victory.”