By Brad Hughes Prepare for a Challenge… A recent decision by Ohio’s Second District Court of Appeals addresses a couple of topics that have been recurring features on this blog: final appealable orders and secrecy in litigation. As to the former, we have previously discussed the complexity of characterizing orders that either grant or deny preliminary injunctive relief as either final, appealable orders (or not), in our recent blog posts found here and here. As to the latter, in early 2022, we discussed an Ohio Supreme Court decision called State ex rel. Cincinnati Enquirer v. Shanahan, regar ..read more

By Terry Posey Yet another reminder: The mandatory nature of the Ohio Supreme Court’s Rules of Practice   In Ohio state-court litigation, most timing deadlines are not automatic and can be “finessed” if need be (aside from the mandatory 30-day time period to file a notice of appeal). The Ohio Supreme Court, however, treats most of the timing rules in the Ohio Supreme Court Rules of Practice as dispositive of the issue presented. What you need to know about timing rules Some of these have been long known. The Rules of Practice state in numerous locations that the Clerk “shall refuse” to f ..read more

By Grace Karabinus This article highlights new developments on the subject of a former Ohio Appellate Insights post considering the authority of appellate courts to immediately review appeals from provisional orders. In that prior post, the blog addressed the First District’s decision in Preterm-Cleveland et al. v. Yost, Atty Gen., et al., in which the First District held that it lacked jurisdiction to hear an appeal from what it characterized as a non-final order granting a preliminary injunction and enjoining enforcement of the “Heartbeat Act.” Although that decision by the First District w ..read more

By Brad Hughes Benjamin Franklin remarked in Poor Richard’s Almanack that “three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” Keeping secrets is indeed a tricky business, and none the less so in civil litigation. Over the course of their careers in the law, the authors of this blog have perceived an increase in litigants’ attempts to maintain substantial amounts of information related to their cases under seal, even as they seek redress (or seek to defend themselves) in the ostensibly public forum of a courthouse. We addressed the “fine line between publicity and privacy in litigation” in thi ..read more

By Brad Hughes As Ohio attorneys who focus on appellate issues, one of the trusty treatises we often consult in our practice is former First District Court of Appeals Judge Mark Painter’s seminal Ohio Appellate Practice handbook, published by Baldwin. If you don’t have it in your library but enjoy appellate work, we highly recommend it. And for years, in the section pertaining to administrative appeals taken under Ohio’s Administrative Procedure Act, commonly known as “Chapter 119 appeals,” Judge Painter’s treatise has noted that certain administrative appeals in Ohio had to be brought in Fra ..read more

By Brad Hughes The COVID-19 pandemic introduced some new flexibility into the traditionally rigid legal workplace. For those working in downtown offices, the traffic on the daily commute was certainly better. And remote work options allowed counsel to take depositions from the comfort of their home offices. Got a hearing coming up on a motion? Fine, let’s conduct it via Zoom. Big oral argument coming up? No problem — the court says that can be done on Microsoft Teams. The pandemic and related stay-at-home orders certainly required some unprecedented understanding and adaptability from partici ..read more

By Terry Posey We’ve had conversations with judges, but for this installment, I will be discussing appellate strategy with Michael Hendershot, Deputy Solicitor General at the Ohio Solicitor General’s Office. Michael has served as a law clerk for on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a law clerk for an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, an attorney in private practice, and since 2008, with the Solicitor General’s office, where he has briefed and argued more than 30 appeals at the Ohio Supreme Court. The conversation below was adapted from an August 2022 CLE at the Columbus Bar Association, where Mic ..read more

By Terry Posey We’ve had conversations with judges, but for this installment, I will be discussing appellate strategy with Michael Hendershot, Deputy Solicitor General at the Ohio Solicitor General’s Office. Michael has served as a law clerk for on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a law clerk for an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, an attorney in private practice, and since 2008, with the Solicitor General’s office, where he has briefed and argued more than 30 appeals at the Ohio Supreme Court. The conversation below was adapted from an August 2022 CLE at the Columbus Bar Association, where Mic ..read more

By Terry Posey We’ve written before about the heartfelt pain appellate lawyers experience when a case is dismissed after briefing and oral argument at the Ohio Supreme Court. In the first instance, it happened for a lack of a final appealable order. In the second, the court ultimately decided the case had already been mooted. It turns out there’s a third possibility — a jurisdictional defect. Dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction Although we tend to focus on the state courts here at Ohio Appellate Insights, today’s discussion arises from a recent Sixth Circuit opinion. In Akno 101 ..read more

By Brad Hughes As many readers of this blog likely will be aware, the doctrine of administrative deference — the extent to which courts may properly defer to agencies’ interpretations of statutes and/or rules — has been a hot topic in recent years in the United States Supreme Court. In Kisor v. Wilkie, for example, the Supreme Court addressed a three-step process for how courts, in litigation, should consider deference to an agency’s interpretation of its own rule, by asking: is the rule genuinely ambiguous? if so, is the agency’s interpretation of the genuine ambiguity reasonable; and even ..read more