Rite Aid Corp.’s chief legal officer Thomas Sabatino Jr. has left the bankrupt retailer after roughly a year in the role and after the company recently won approval for a corporate restructuring plan.
The company disclosed in an Aug. 19 securities filing that Christin Bassett is now its acting general counsel and corporate secretary. Bassett, a former Reed Smith partner who was previously named interim law head following the departure last year of former Rite Aid legal chief Paul Gilbert, was elevated again in July, according to her LinkedIn profile and the pharmacy chain’s website.
Sabatino’s name was removed from the management page on Rite Aid’s website that same month and replaced by Bassett, who was hired by the company as its head of litigation in 2021 and subsequently promoted to deputy general counsel. Bassett, Sabatino, and Rite Aid didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Sabatino joined Rite Aid in June 2023 after a long career in top legal jobs at leading US public companies such as Aetna Inc., Baxter International Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc., Schering-Plough Corp., Tenneco Inc., United Airlines Inc., and Walgreens Co. He and Bassett worked together at Aetna, which was sold for $68 billion in 2019 to Rite Aid rival CVS Health Corp.
Rite Aid noted Sabatino’s four decades of legal expertise in recruiting him last year to lead its legal team ahead of a Chapter 11 filing by the drugstore giant in October 2023. Sabatino’s biography on the website for the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution, a nonprofit on whose board he serves, now lists him as a retired legal chief who most recently worked at Rite Aid.
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