J. Craig Wright

In Girgis v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, the plaintiff sought uninsured motorist benefits after alleging her car was struck by an unidentified vehicle causing her to lose control and crash, resulting in injuries. Her policy required physical contact with the uninsured vehicle for coverage, which the insurer denied due to lack of such contact. The Ohio Supreme Court held that R.C. 3937.18 and public policy prohibit insurance contracts from mandating physical contact as a prerequisite for uninsured motorist recovery. The court adopted the corroborative evidence test, allowing claims to proceed with independent third-party testimony establishing that an unidentified driver's negligence proximately caused the accident.

business & regulatorytorts & liability

This case involved a guidance counselor, Shirlee Hara, who had a continuing contract with a school board and oral supplemental contracts for additional work days that were later reduced without written notice as required by statute. Hara sued for declaratory judgment and back pay after the board decreased her supplemental days from 55 to 40 and then to 20, claiming the reductions were improper and that the contracts should have automatically renewed. The court held that the attempted reductions were invalid under R.C. 3319.08 because they lacked required written notice, meaning the supplemental contracts continued at the original terms, but applied the doctrine of laches due to Hara's delay in filing her claim, which limited her recovery to back pay for certain years. It also addressed the length of automatic renewals under former R.C. 3119.11 and remanded for recomputation of the award. The Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the lower courts' rulings on these issues.

labor & employment

The case arose from a letter of credit issued by Commerce Exchange Bank on behalf of Dart Steel to LTV Steel, secured by a certificate of deposit that Mantua Manufacturing had pledged as collateral for Dart; after the bank honored a draw by LTV and applied the CD proceeds when Dart failed to reimburse, Mantua sued claiming it was a statutory "customer" entitled to consent to multiple extensions of the LC under R.C. Chapter 1305. The Ohio Supreme Court held that the UCP (to which the LC was expressly subject) replaced conflicting UCC provisions on customer consent, that Mantua was not a "customer" under R.C. 1305.01(A)(7), and that only Dart qualified as the applicant or analogous party. The court construed "other person who causes an issuer to issue a credit" narrowly to mean a party in a non-goods transaction standing in a position similar to a buyer, rejecting Mantua's broader "but for" causation argument, and therefore reversed the appeals court and remanded the case.

business & regulatory

In State v. Nickelson, the defendant was convicted of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping after a retrial; his direct appeal was affirmed by the court of appeals. He then filed an application under App.R. 26(B) to reopen the appeal, claiming ineffective assistance of appellate counsel for failing to raise issues including prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument, potential juror bias, the lack of a jury view request, and inadequate pretrial investigation, as well as for not obtaining the closing-argument transcript. The court of appeals denied both the transcript request and the reopening application. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the right to a free transcript does not attach until an appeal is pending and that Nickelson failed to raise a genuine issue of ineffective assistance under the Strickland v. Washington standard because he did not show a reasonable probability that the unraised claims would have succeeded. The court therefore concluded that appellate counsel's performance was not prejudicial.

criminal lawprocedure

In State v. Williams, the Ohio Supreme Court reviewed the convictions and death sentence of Andre Williams for the 1988 aggravated murder, robbery, and attempted rape of an elderly couple during a home invasion. Williams and an accomplice beat the victims, killing the husband and severely injuring the wife, then stole cash and a VCR. The court held that felony-murder specifications do not require the intent to commit the underlying felony to precede the killing, that questions of significant prior criminal history are for the jury rather than expert witnesses, and that the aggravating circumstances of the crime outweighed the limited mitigating factors such as the defendant's low IQ and youth. The court affirmed the convictions and death penalty while reversing on a cross-appeal issue.

criminal law

In State v. Engle, the defendant was charged with multiple serious offenses including aggravated murder after her husband allegedly killed their child; during trial she entered a no-contest plea to reduced charges following the court's grant of a motion in limine barring expert testimony on battered-woman syndrome and duress. The plea agreement was presented to the court with repeated statements by the prosecutor, defense counsel, and judge that the defendant could appeal the adverse rulings, yet under Ohio law a no-contest plea ordinarily waives such appellate review. The Ohio Supreme Court held that the plea was not knowingly and intelligently made and therefore could not be enforced, because the defendant had been affirmatively misled about her ability to appeal the pretrial rulings. The court reversed the conviction and remanded the case, emphasizing that Criminal Rule 11(C) requires an oral dialogue ensuring the defendant understands the consequences of the plea.

criminal lawprocedure