Supreme Court case announcements, 2/22/17

The Supreme Court has announced the acceptance of five new cases (though only three were placed on the active docket). All five cases involve review of decisions from the Eighth District.

O'Hamill v. CareSource Management Group was accepted and held for the decision in Ferguson v. State. These cases relate to the constitutionality of the statutory requirement that an employer consent to the employee's dismissal of the complaint in an employer's workers comp appeal. Ferguson was argued in February and is likely to be decided this summer. O'Hamill comes from the Eighth District.

Pre-Term Cleveland, Inc. v. Kasich, another Eighth District case, asks whether a plaintiff must independently establish standing for each claim. The jurisdictional briefs include discussion of whether standing is a constitutional requirement rooted in separation of powers doctrines, or whether it is merely a common law requirement.

Cyran v. Cyran is a consolidated certified conflict and discretionary appeal out of the Second District. It asks whether the collateral consequences exception to mootness can apply to an appeal from an expired protective order, when the potential collateral consequences are not ascertainable at the time of the appeal. The Second District had held that the answer was no and dismissed the appeal as moot. That court certified, and Supreme Court confirmed, its decision as being in conflict with the Eighth District's 2007 decision in Wilder v. Perma.

In State v. Pountney, the State has appealed the Eighth District's decision vacating a conviction for a bulk amount of the drug fentanyl on the grounds that the State did not prove that the defendant possessed a "bulk amount" of the drug. The case asks whether the State can use the "usual daily dose" of morphine as the basis for a calculation of what constitutes the "bulk amount" of the drug fentanyl--morphine and fentanyl being similar drugs, and there being no "usual daily dose" of fentanyl.

Finally, the Court accepted State v. Mack, vacated the decision below, and remanded for consideration of the merits of the appeal. Mack is a death row inmate litigating a successive habeas petition, and had argued that the lower courts had failed to consider the all of the transcripts in the record.

The cases are likely to be fully briefed by early summer.