My client “Sam” sure sounded like a badass:  four counts of aggravated robbery, each with one- and three-year gun specs, and four counts of kidnapping.  According to the police report that the prosecutor was reading me, Sam tried to hold up four people in an apartment at gunpoint.

Then the prosecutor got to the part where the “gun” Sam had was a plastic toy one. (keep reading…)

A year ago, I wrote about the 8th District’s decision in Hayes v. Oakridge Nursing Home, in which the court by 2-1 vote invalidated an arbitration clause in a nursing home contract between the home and a 94-year-old resident.  Although sympathetic to the result, I questioned the court’s reasoning, especially in finding that the agreement was “substantively unconsionable” because it didn’t provide for a jury trial or the recovery of attorney fees or punitive damages.  I concluded by saying,

I think the courts’ heart is in the right place:  there is an inherent disparity in bargaining power between a consumer and a corporation, and that needs to be recognized.  The problem I have with the slapdash approach of coming to a conclusion and then developing the rationale to support it is that eventually this is all going to wind up in the Ohio Supreme Court’s lap, and if that court has to go looking for a rationale, it’s likely to look no farther than a pro-business reiteration of the “strong presumption in favor of arbitration.” 

Last week, that’s pretty much what happened:  In a 6-1 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court reversed and held that the arbitration agreement was valid, citing the “strong public policy favoring arbitration.”  (keep reading…)

On tap this week in the 8th:  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that there are no second acts in American lives doesn’t apply to grand juries, what abuse of discretion should mean, and people you wouldn’t want as neighbors. (keep reading…)

The US Supreme Court has finished oral argument for the term, and about the only key criminal case still undecided is Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, involving the applicability of Crawford v. Washington to lab reports.  Word is that President Obama may announce his pick for the justice to replace David Souter; a somewhat disquieting aspect of that is that he took longer to pick his dog.  That selection, of course, will initiate one of the capitol’s favorite contact spectator sports:  the nominee’s confirmation hearings.  The pointlessness of those proceedings was best summarized by Abe Lincoln when questioned about his nomination of Salmon Chase:  “We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it.”

Down I-71, the Ohio Supreme Court started churning out decisions again.  One was on the savings statute for wrongful death actions, which I discussed last week, and another was on arbitration clauses for nursing home residents, which I’ll discuss later this week.  If you do administrative appeals, you’ll want to check out Medcorp Inc. v. Dept. of Job & Family Serv., which holds that in the requirement that “the grounds of the party’s appeal” has to be set forth means that parties must identify specific legal or factual errors in their notice of appeal; a simple statement that the order appealed from “is contrary to law and not supported by reliable, probative, or substantial evidence” doesn’t cut it.  And in Olympic Holding Co. v. ACE Limited, the court holds that a promissory estoppel argument that the other party has breached a promise to sign an agreement can’t be used if the statute of frauds requires the agreement to be in writing.

That’ll come up a lot in my practice.  Anyway, on to the courts of appeals… (keep reading…)

Time to update you on some past stories:  what happened to Harry Ollison, what’s going to happen to teens sentenced to life in prison without parole, and judicial opinions I’d like to see. (keep reading…)

A problem with trying to determine legislative intent is that it presumes the legislature had one.   Only two justices on the Ohio Supreme Court have any prior legislative experience; one of them picked up on that problem last week in the court’s decision in Eppley v. Tri-Valley School Dist. (keep reading…)

Juanita Myrick had a pretty good gig going.  She worked for the Cuyahoga County Department of Employment and Family Services for 17 years.  For 14 of them, she used her position to issue herself checks — 759 of them in all — for public assistance benefits she wasn’t entitled to.  All good things come to an end, and Juanita’s did in early 2007, when an audit uncovered her fraud.  A year later she pled guilty to one count of 2nd-degree felony theft, two third-degree felony counts of tampering with records, and 23 other 4th- and 5th-degree felony counts of identity theft and unauthorized use of a computer. 

And last week, in State v. Myrick, the 8th District upheld her sentence of 20½ years in prison.  (keep reading…)

Mamas, don’t let your children grow up to be personal injury lawyers.  And while you’re at it, you might warn them about the dangers posed by the combination of women and crack pipes.  (keep reading…)

Lots of news from DC, topped with the announcement that David Souter will be retiring from the Supreme Court.  For those of you with a bent for walking down Memory Lane, check out this article from the Washington Post right after Souter first took the bench:

Justice David H. Souter’s moderate-sounding testimony at his confirmation hearings last September left some conservatives nervous about whether they were getting the judicial hard-liner they had been promised.

Souter’s performance during his first eight months on the bench should help allay that anxiety. If Souter does not turn out to be a home run for conservatives, as White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu reportedly predicted at the time of Souter’s nomination, his votes suggest at the very least “a stand-up triple,” as one court observer put it.

Well, not so much. (keep reading…)

The Supreme Court occasionally ventures out of Columbus to hold arguments in various courthouses around the state.  The venue last week was the Columbiana Courthouse, and Chief Justice Moyer began the proceedings by noting that the court was returning to Columbiana for the first time in 260 years, which was off by only a century; Ohio didn’t become a state until 1803.   

The amenities out of the way, the court settled down to hear State v. Hunter, which featured the question of the constitutionality of the repeat violent offender specification.  But several comments during argument about the US Supreme Court’s January decision in Oregon v. Ice raised questions about the major ramifications that decision could have on Ohio sentencing law.  (keep reading…)