FAIRMONT — A Marion County judge has denied the injunction that would have stopped Friday’s sale of the John Manchin Sr. Health Center in Fairmont.

Judge Matt Delligatti made his ruling at the close of a nearly three-hour hearing Tuesday that included testimony from Cathie DeVito Matheny, who spoke on her behalf of her mother, who has been a patient there for the past seven years and requires round-the-clock care.

DeVito doesn’t always know where she is in the course of a given day, but her daughter knows.

“She’s exactly 2.6 miles from my house,” she said. “I can visit her every day. And I can’t say enough about the care she gets from the staff. They all know her by name. And she hasn’t had one bedsore in seven years.”

Fairmont attorney and state delegate Joey Garcia filed a lawsuit on behalf of the resident, naming Gov. Patrick Morrisey and Michael Caruso, secretary of the Department of Health Facilities, as defendants.

Neither the governor nor the secretary, Garcia argued, had the authority to launch the sale of Manchin center and four other state-run facilities — including Hopemont Hospital in Terra Alta, Jackie Withrow Hospital in Beckley and Lakin Hospital in West Columbia.

Morrisey announced the $60 million package deal in August, saying the facilities were outmoded and it would cost the state at least $100 million to renovate the buildings.

While Marx Development Group, the New York City real estate firm that made the buy, has pledged to build additional facilities — there’s no guarantee they would be built in Fairmont or any of the other locales.

Charleston attorney Zak Ritchie countered that care would suffer, were the deal to suddenly be placed in legal limbo.

With the changeover already in the works, he said, vendors already notified would have to be informed by certified mail — a legislative requirement — that the sale was on hold. That could likely mean disruptions in food and pharmacy services, he said.

Speaking earlier in Charleston, Morrisey said patient care was the linchpin for him all along.

“Government should never have been in the business of doing this in the first place, and we took incredible steps to assure higher quality,” he said.

DeVito Matheny said if she had known earlier of the potential ramifications, she “may have not even been here today.”

Delligatti, meanwhile, said the issue of authority to sell the properties was beyond his purview.

“That’s not for this court to decide,” he said.