appellate law

Subscribe to appellate law via RSS

Discretionary appeals at the Ohio Supreme Court are under strict timing requirements pursuant to Supreme Court Rules of Practice 7.01(A). Absent an application for reconsideration or a motion for en banc review in the lower court, a notice of appeal and a memorandum in support of jurisdiction must be filed within 45 days of the judgment being appealed. Under Rule 7.02(E), the Clerk of the Supreme Court is under instructions not to file an untimely notice of appeal (or one being filed without a memorandum in support of jurisdiction). There is no way to get an extension on the timing (absent certain circumstances in criminal cases).

But what if you need an extension on the response? Maybe you are going on vacation, have a pressing work conflict, or just need additional time to research.Continue Reading Doing the impossible: How to get an extension to file a memorandum in response to a memorandum in support of jurisdiction at the Ohio Supreme Court

In early 2023, Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy of the Supreme Court of Ohio announced the Court’s intent to streamline the legal citation process in Ohio. In furtherance of that goal, the Court formed a new committee tasked with proposing changes to The Supreme Court of Ohio Writing Manual, a guide for formatting legal citations in state court.

The Writing Manual Revision Committee’s proposed changes were adopted by the Court in Feb. 2024 and the new edition of the manual took effect on June 17th, 2024. The updated manual includes, among other things: stronger language directing lawyers to follow the manual; the introduction of a navigable homepage (presenting examples of properly cited sources); revisions to case and statute citation rules; and guidance on when to use a parenthetical phrase “(cleaned up)” in certain citations that has sparked recent debate within the legal community.Continue Reading A new day for legal citation in Ohio

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, regarding whether a police officer could proceed under a pseudonym in his defamation case – and the Court in that case said no.Continue Reading Seeking to proceed under a pseudonym in Ohio State Court? 

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.Continue Reading Understanding the Ohio Supreme Court timing requirements

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 this post early last year.Continue Reading ‘Appealing’ from no sealing: Recent Fifth District decision highlights procedural wrinkle in rules of superintendence

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 participants in the legal system, be they lawyers, judges, clients or court staff.Continue Reading Two recent decisions by Ohio appellate courts caution counsel against undue reliance upon health emergencies to delay trials

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.Continue Reading Thinking about appellate strategy with Michael Hendershot, Ohio Solicitor General’s Office

Imagine that your client has been sued for damages in federal court. In a motion for summary judgment, you assert what you believe to be a valid and compelling legal defense, such as the plaintiff’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies. There are no facts in dispute regarding the defense—it presents a purely legal question for the judge to resolve before any trial takes place. Yet the judge denies your dispositive motion, and so you proceed to a jury trial, where your client is hit with a substantial verdict. As you consider post-trial motions, you may wonder: must you re-brief the purely legal defense in a Rule 50 motion — even though the judge previously denied it on summary judgment — in order to preserve that issue for appeal?Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court agrees to resolve Dupree circuit split

Members of our firm’s Appellate Practice Group are consulted regularly by our colleagues about procedural issues arising from so-called interlocutory appeals. In other words, appeals taken (or attempted to be taken) from decisions by trial courts at some point before final judgment. Continue Reading The tricky business of appealing from decisions granting preliminary injunctive relief