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

In State v. Reed, the defendant was convicted of drug abuse and sentenced to prison; his initial appeal, which raised only a manifest-weight claim without citing case law and omitted any argument about the trial court's denial of his request to represent himself, was affirmed. Reed later sought to reopen the appeal under App.R. 26(B), alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel for failing to assert the constitutional self-representation issue. The court of appeals denied reopening, but the Ohio Supreme Court reversed, holding that the two-prong Strickland standard governs whether a genuine issue exists under App.R. 26(B)(5) and that Reed had satisfied both deficient performance and prejudice because the omitted Faretta claim had a reasonable probability of success and is reversible error per se. The court remanded with instructions to grant the application and consider the self-representation claim on its merits.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involved two hotel guests who were assaulted by a man they met and invited into their room at a Courtyard by Marriott after a night out; they sued the hotel and its security staff for negligence in failing to protect them and sought punitive damages. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court's directed verdict against the punitive damages claim along with its order granting a new trial to one of the plaintiffs. The court held that a punitive damages claim based on a 'conscious disregard' theory of malice requires proof of the defendant's subjective knowledge of the danger posed to the plaintiff, which was absent here. It also found no abuse of discretion in ordering a new trial because the jury's verdicts on the plaintiffs' comparative negligence were inconsistent with the evidence presented at trial regarding their interactions with the assailant.

torts & liabilityprocedure

In this case, minority shareholders owning about 6.8% of a privately held corporation with around 100 shareholders sued three directors and a stock valuation firm, alleging they colluded to undervalue the stock for the benefit of an employee stock option plan and breached fiduciary duties to the minority owners. The plaintiffs sought to pursue these claims directly rather than as a shareholder derivative action under Civ.R. 23.1. The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants, and the court of appeals affirmed. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the action must be derivative because the company is not a close corporation, the alleged injuries were not distinct to the plaintiffs but affected all shareholders similarly, and precedents like Crosby v. Beam and Adair v. Wozniak require derivative treatment in such circumstances. The court also noted the plaintiffs failed to meet the procedural requirements for a derivative suit.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involves a workers' compensation claim in which claimant Moses Pass sought permanent total disability compensation from the Industrial Commission of Ohio after two work-related injuries, with allowed conditions including lumbosacral strain, chronic depression, and aggravation of pre-existing arthritis. The commission denied benefits based on medical reports from Drs. Howard and Kackley finding limited impairment and capacity for light work, while discounting a vocational assessment, and the court of appeals upheld the denial as supported by some evidence and compliant with Noll. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed in part, ruling that the commission's order failed to properly consider all allowed conditions and lacked required factual specificity, but declined full relief under Gay because such extraordinary mandamus relief applies only in cases of clear abuse of discretion. The court instead issued a limited writ vacating the order and remanding for a new, reasoned determination.

labor & employmentprocedure

The case involved Daniel Wilson, who was convicted of aggravated murder after locking Carol Lutz in the trunk of her car, puncturing the gas tank, and setting the vehicle on fire, resulting in her death from burns and carbon monoxide poisoning. Wilson appealed his conviction and death sentence to the Ohio Supreme Court following affirmance by the court of appeals. The court upheld the death penalty, finding that the aggravating circumstance of committing murder during the course of arson and kidnapping outweighed mitigating factors such as Wilson's troubled childhood, youth at the time of the offense, personality disorders, and alcoholism. The decision rested on a statutory weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances under Ohio law, along with proportionality review against similar capital cases.

criminal law

The case concerned whether the Trumbull County Board of Health could issue its own licensing rules for construction and demolition debris facilities in 1991, before the Ohio EPA had adopted statewide rules under R.C. Chapter 3714 and while the county was not on the approved list of local health boards. The trial court upheld the county's authority and issued a permanent injunction against Snyder's facility based on nuisance findings; the court of appeals reversed on the licensing authority and nuisance issues. The Ohio Supreme Court held that the county lacked authority to enact such rules because R.C. Chapter 3714 assigned primary regulatory jurisdiction to the state EPA and approved boards, affirming that portion of the appellate decision. It reversed and remanded the nuisance determination for consideration of additional evidence such as noise and dust, found the inverse-condemnation claim not moot but without merit, and remanded the damages claim.

environmentbusiness & regulatoryproperty

The case involved a property owner, Alfred Grava, who was denied a zoning certificate by Parkman Township to build on industrially zoned land because it fell short of the five-acre minimum. After the zoning board denied his variance request in 1991 and he did not appeal, Grava filed a second application in 1992 seeking the certificate under a nonconforming-use provision in the zoning ordinance. The board rejected the new application on res judicata grounds, and both the trial court and court of appeals affirmed. The Ohio Supreme Court held that a valid final judgment on the merits bars all subsequent claims arising from the same transaction or occurrence, even if based on a different legal theory, thereby overruling prior precedent that had limited res judicata in this context. The decision applied the doctrine to decisions of a board of zoning appeals absent changed circumstances.

propertyprocedure

The case involved Richard Frazier, who was convicted of aggravated murder for stabbing his former stepdaughter Tiffany Skiba nineteen times in 1990, amid pending rape charges against him for prior sexual abuse of the victim. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld Frazier's convictions and death sentence after reviewing the trial record, including the admissibility of certain statements under Evid.R. 410 regarding alleged plea discussions, which required assessing the defendant's subjective expectation and its reasonableness. The court determined that the aggravating circumstances—such as murder to escape punishment for rape and to prevent testimony—outweighed any mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt, with no significant evidence supporting statutory mitigators like mental defect or duress. It also conducted a proportionality review comparing the case to similar precedents before affirming the penalty.

criminal law

The case involved Clifford Donta Williams, who was convicted of aggravated murder for fatally shooting cab driver Wayman Hamilton in the head during a robbery after hailing the cab from a gas station in Ohio. Williams was also linked to an attempted robbery and shooting of another victim hours later, with ballistics evidence connecting the crimes through matching cartridge casings. On direct appeal from the trial court and court of appeals, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence. The court reasoned that sufficient evidence supported the jury's findings of guilt and aggravating circumstances, and it rejected the defendant's numerous constitutional challenges to the trial proceedings, jury selection, sentencing process, and Ohio's death penalty statutes as lacking merit.

criminal law

The case concerned Glen Wilson, who was convicted in 1981 in adult common pleas court of grand theft for acts committed in late 1980 when he was 17 years old. Twelve years later, Wilson filed a postconviction motion to vacate the conviction, claiming the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because no bindover from juvenile court had occurred under R.C. 2151.26. The Ohio Supreme Court held that juvenile courts possess exclusive original jurisdiction over alleged delinquent acts by minors absent a proper bindover, and that this jurisdiction cannot be waived by a defendant or conferred by failure to object. It further ruled that a judgment entered without such jurisdiction is void and may be challenged collaterally, rejecting application of waiver or res judicata. The court affirmed the appeals court's order vacating the conviction.

criminal lawprocedurefamily law

The case involved a defendant convicted of voluntary manslaughter after shooting the victim during a fight outside a club, where the defense sought to call a witness (Philip Hoover) involved in the incident who intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination if questioned. The trial court excluded the witness from testifying before the jury, leading to an appeal on whether this violated the defendant's compulsory process rights under the Ohio Constitution. The Ohio Supreme Court held that a trial court may exclude a witness who will only assert the Fifth Amendment and offer no testimony, distinguishing prior precedent, but ruled that the defendant is entitled to request a jury instruction that no inference should be drawn from the witness's absence because the witness was unavailable to either side. The court reversed the appeals court in part, affirmed in part, and reinstated the trial court's judgment, including on the admission of other-acts evidence.

criminal lawprocedurecivil rights

In this case, plaintiff Kevin McAuliffe was injured in October 1989 while riding a mountain bike and filed suit in July 1992 against the manufacturer, alleging strict product liability under R.C. 2307.73 for a defect in the bike's front fork. The manufacturer moved to dismiss on grounds that the claim was time-barred by the two-year statute of limitations for bodily injury actions under R.C. 2305.10, while McAuliffe contended it was governed by the six-year period in R.C. 2305.07 for actions upon a liability created by statute. The trial court dismissed the complaint, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that the product liability statutes created a new statutory liability. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed again and reinstated the dismissal, ruling that R.C. 2307.73 does not create a cause of action that would not exist but for the statute because it merely modifies or codifies common-law product liability principles, and therefore the two-year bodily injury limitations period applies.

torts & liabilityprocedure

The case involved a wrongful death action by the estate of Russell Michaels, an employee of an electrical subcontractor, who fell through an uncovered floor hole at Ford Motor Company's construction site and died from his injuries. Michaels's estate sued Ford under Ohio's frequenter statutes (R.C. 4101.11 and 4101.12), claiming Ford failed to provide a safe workplace. The trial court granted Ford summary judgment, the court of appeals affirmed, and the Ohio Supreme Court also affirmed, holding that Ford owed no duty of care to Michaels. The court reasoned that Ford had merely directed the general contractor to cut the holes as required by contract specifications without retaining custody, control, or direction over the means or manner of safeguarding the area afterward, so the statutes did not impose liability on the owner.

torts & liabilitylabor & employment

The case involved a dispute over whether a health insurer could seek reimbursement from its insured for medical benefits paid after the insured received a settlement from his uninsured motorist carrier. Blue Cross paid for Robert Hrenko's medical expenses following a car accident caused by an uninsured driver, and Hrenko later settled his claim with Allstate for $42,000. Blue Cross then demanded repayment under a subrogation clause in the health insurance policy, which Hrenko refused, leading to litigation. The Ohio Supreme Court held that the contract's subrogation provision expressly applied to recoveries from uninsured motorist insurers and was enforceable under principles of conventional subrogation. The court reasoned that the clause's plain language covered such recoveries and did not violate public policy, as it prevented double recovery while ensuring the insured received equivalent compensation to what he would have obtained from an insured tortfeasor.

business & regulatoryhealthcare