Case Update
A light week. Nothing notable from DC. The Columbus Seven handed down a couple of significant decisions, which we'll talk about on Wednesday. The weekly spate of disciplinary cases features this one, in which the panel recommended suspension for six months, the board upped that to two years with one stayed, and the Supreme Court says that's not enough and imposes an indefinite suspension. Chief among the lawyer's sins was Abe Lincoln's maxim about representing oneself: the lawyer did just that in his divorce case. The court found disciplinary violations from the attorney stopping payment on a check for an expert witness' deposition, and engaging in various legal shenanigans to avoid paying child support. Of course, it didn't help that the lawyer also did things like hold himself out as the partner of a lawyer who'd died two years earlier, and accepting fees while he was already suspended.
Light week in the courts of appeals, too, which finds only 50-some decisions...
Civil. 10th District notes that dismissal without prejudice for failure to prosecute action is not a final appealable order; plaintiff can simply refile... 3rd District upholds grant of summary judgment to defendant on defense of sudden medical emergency where driver lost consciousness, crashed into house... 10th District says that trial court did not abuse discretion in rejecting uncontradicted expert opinion that mother should not have unsupervised visitation...
Criminal. Where trial court fails to make findings of fact and conclusions of law in petitition for post-conviction relief, order isn't final and appeal will be dismissed, says 10th District; proper remedy is to file mandamus action... 3rd District says that venue established in rape case where evidence showed episode began and ended in same county, rape had to hae occurred in that county or adjacent one... 8th District says that trial court required to advise defendant of post-release controls, but not parole, at plea... 2nd District holds that 180-day speedy trial statute for prisoners supersedes normal 270-day limit for everybody else, once defendant is served with copy of indictment in prison, he has to follow requirements of RC 2941.401...
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. In State v. Rexroad, the 3rd District upholds defendant's maximum 180-day jail sentence for vehicular homicide. Rexroad was driving a dump truck, and failed to come to a complete stop at an intersection; a car carrying three teenagers plowed into his truck, and two of them were killed. The appellate court noted that Rexroad's claims of remorse were belied by testimony that, two months after the accident, he was seen "wearing a t-shirt with a cartoonist drawing on the back of a dump truck, and around the dump truck it read, 'Fill them like box cars, drive them like stock cars.'"
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