Covid casualty: Dartmouth Justice to close

Jul 24, 2020

Justice at the Dartmouth Mall is holding a store closing sale after parent company ascena retail group announced that it would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 23 due to the pandemic.

The store, which sells clothes and accessories for pre-teen girls, is one of a “significant number” of the retailers that will be closed by ascena after the coronavirus “severely disrupted” the company’s finances, according to a press release.

On Friday afternoon, merchandise in the mall’s Justice was 40-60 percent off — and according to manager Melissa Carvalho, as more inventory is sold, remaining items will be sold at higher discounts.

There is no closing date as yet, Carvalho added. “We’ll keep going until we sell out of everything,” she said.

Luckily, Carvalho noted, most of the staff have already found new positions — and she said the five remaining employees will be “fine.”

The Fall River resident said that she was there from the very beginning, when the Justice first opened 17 years ago. 

Nonetheless, “I’m okay with it [closing],” she noted. “It’s a new start!”