Justia Ohio Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Kohl’s Illinois, Inc. filed a valuation complaint challenging the tax year 2010 valuation of a Kohl’s store in Marion County. The Board of Revision (BOR) dismissed the case, finding that the complaint was void because the property was subject to a tax-increment-financing (TIF) agreement that contained a covenant prohibiting the filing of a complaint against the value. The Board of Tax Appeals (BTA) affirmed the decision of the BOR. The Supreme Court vacated the decision of the BTA, holding (1) any bar to the complaint that arises from the TIF agreement is not a jurisdictional restriction, and therefore, the complaint was not void; (2) the beneficiaries of the covenant had the burden to assert the covenant as a defense against Kohl’s complaint; and (3) because the beneficiaries did not shoulder the burden to prove their entitlement to a dismissal of Kohl’s complaint, the decision of the BTA must be vacated. Remanded. View "Kohl’s Ill., Inc. v. Bd. of Revision" on Justia Law

Bank of America, N.A. filed a complaint in foreclosure against George and Bridget Kuchta, claiming to be the holder of a promissory note and assignee of the mortgage. The trial court granted summary judgment to the bank and entered a decree of foreclosure in its favor. The Kuchtas moved to vacate the summary judgment and decree of foreclosure, arguing that the bank lacked standing to commence the action because it did not prove ownership of the note and because the mortgage assignment was fatally flawed. The trial court denied the motion. The court of appeals reversed, holding that standing is a jurisdictional matter and that Bank of America’s alleged lack of standing would warrant relief from judgment. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that a lack of standing cannot support a motion for relief from judgment, and lack of standing does not render a judgment void for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. View "Bank of Am., N.A. v. Kuchta" on Justia Law

In 2011, Bernard Keith entered Lorain Correctional Institution to serve a six-month sentence. A hearing officer subsequently determined that Keith’s previous parole should be revoked. After a parole release hearing, the parole board denied Keith’s parole, citing several factors and stating that Keith had been paroled eight times. Keith filed this action in mandamus, requesting that the Ohio Adult Parole Authority (OAPA) be compelled to correct the record to reflect the correct number of times he had been paroled and that the parole board grant him a new hearing to consider the corrected information. The OAPA filed a motion to dismiss Keith’s case. Keith subsequently raised additional claims of further errors in his records. The court of appeals granted the OAPA’s motion for summary judgment because the information regarding the number of times Keith had been paroled had been corrected and because the parole board declined to modify its decision based on that corrected information. The Supreme Court reversed and granted the writ because the court of appeals failed to consider Keith’s additional assertions of error in his record. View "State ex rel. Keith v. Ohio Adult Parole Auth." on Justia Law

Reporting that it suffered underrecovered transmission costs of $36 million during the period under review, the Ohio Power Company filed an application to recover the underrecovered transmission costs associated with providing transmission service to its standard-service-offer customers. The Public Utilities Commission approved the application, determining that Ohio Power could collect the underrecovered costs from both shopping and nonshopping customers. Industrial Energy Users-Ohio (IEU) appealed, arguing that the Commission abused its discretion by allowing Ohio Power to recover the underrecovered transmission costs from shopping customers. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the IEU did not meet its burden of demonstrating that the Commission’s orders were unjust, unreasonable, or unlawful. View "In re Application of Ohio Power Co." on Justia Law

The City of Cincinnati charged Daniel Ilg with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and related offenses. Ilg moved to suppress the results of his breath test taken from an Intoxilyzer 8000 machine. During discovery, Ilg sought computerized online breath archives data consisting of information transmitted by the specific machine used to test him to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) for each breath test it performed. Ilg sought the data to challenge whether the Intoxilyzer 8000 machine operated properly on the day of his arrest. When the information was not forthcoming, the trial court ordered ODH to disclose the records. The ODH failed to comply with the discovery order, and the trial court ordered as a sanction that the evidence obtained from the Intoxilyzer 8000 be excluded from trial. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the sanction was warranted in this case because Ilg was entitled to discovery of relevant evidence to support his claim that the Intoxilyzer 8000 machine used to test him failed to operate properly. View "City of Cincinnati v. Ilg" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed this action alleging that Defendant breached certain leases by failing to provide separate meters for utilities inside the leased premises. The trial court granted a preliminary injunction and ordered Defendant to install separate meters for utilities within thirty days. Although Defendant subsequently provided separate meters for the leased premises, the trial court found Dashing Pacific in contempt of court and ordered it to correct certain distribution systems within thirty days or the court would impose a fine of $1,000 per day until Defendant complied with the order. Defendant appealed. The court of appeals denied Plaintiff’s motion to dismiss the appeal, concluding that a contempt citation is final and appealable if it includes both a finding of contempt and pronouncement of a penalty or sanction, even though the order contains purge conditions. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that a court order finding a party in contempt and imposing a sentence conditioned on the failure to purge is final and appealable on the issue of whether the party is in contempt of court. View "Docks Venture, LLC v. Dashing Pac. Group, Ltd." on Justia Law

Claimant was terminated from her employment for violating the written attendance policy in her union contract after she was injured at work. Thereafter, Claimant filed for temporary-total-disability (TTD) compensation for her work-related injury. The Industrial Commission concluded that, per State ex rel. Louisiana-Pacific Corp. v. Indus. Comm., Claimant’s termination was a voluntary abandonment that barred payment of TTD compensation. Claimant then filed a complaint for a writ of mandamus. The court of appeals denied the writ, concluding that the evidence supported the Commission’s finding of voluntary abandonment. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that Claimant failed to establish that the Commission abused its discretion when it denied her request for TTD compensation. View "State ex rel. Parraz v. Diamond Crystal Brands, Inc." on Justia Law

The question presented in this case was when a juvenile court can conduct an Ohio Rev. Code 2152.83(B)(2) hearing regarding the appropriateness of juvenile-offender-registrant classification for a juvenile adjudged delinquent. Specifically, at issue was whether a juvenile court can conduct a classification hearing at the time of disposition in a case in which a juvenile is committed to a secure facility or whether the court must wait to conduct the hearing until the juvenile is released from the secure facility. The juvenile court in the instant case committed a juvenile to the Department of Youth Services during a disposition hearing and then, at the same hearing, classified the juvenile as a Tier III sex offender/child-victim offender. The juvenile appealed his classification, arguing that it violated section 2152.83(B)(1). The court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the juvenile court. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that if a court commits a child to a secure facility, section 2152.83(B)(1) permits the court to conduct a classification hearing at the time of disposition. View "In re I.A." on Justia Law

Appellant, an inmate serving sentences from separate convictions, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the jurisdiction of the common pleas court to order him back to prison in the first case after he received an unconditional final release in that case. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds of res judicata, attaching numerous exhibits. The court of appeals granted the motion. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the court of appeals should have granted the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment because the res judicata defense depended on documents outside the pleadings. Further, the appellate court compounded its error by failing to give Appellant an opportunity to respond to the motion. Remanded.View "Jefferson v. Bunting" on Justia Law

A.E.M. Electric Services Corporation, a general contractor, contracted with Transtar Electric, Inc., a subcontractor, to provide electrical services for the installation of a pool at Holiday Inn. A.E.M. did not pay Transtar for its last three invoices because the owner of the project had failed to pay A.E.M. for the work performed by Transtar. A.E.M. alleged that the contract between the parties, which used the phrase “receipt of payment by contractor from the owner for work performed by subcontractor is a condition precedent to payment by contractor to subcontractor for that work”, was sufficient to establish a pay-if-paid payment provision. The court of appeals concluded that the payment provision in the contract was not specific enough to show that both parties understood and agreed that the risk of the owner’s nonpayment would be borne by Transtar instead of A.E.M. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the use of the term “condition precedent” was an explicit statement of the parties’ intent to transfer the risk of the project owner’s nonpayment from A.E.M. to Transtar.View "Transtar Elec., Inc. v. A.E.M. Elec. Servs. Corp." on Justia Law