Supreme Court case announcements, 4/19/17

Today's Ohio Supreme Court orders list includes three new accepted cases.

Schwartz v. Honeywell International, Inc. is an asbestos case that asks whether a theory of causation based only upon cumulative exposure to multiple asbestos-containing products is sufficient to establish that a particular defendant's product was a "substantial factor" under R.C. 2307.96. The Eighth District had held that the answer was yes. The Court did not accept a second proposition of law regarding whether it was prejudicial error "to allow an amicus, repackaged as a scientific article, to be published to a jury." The court of appeals on that issue ruled that any error was harmless, as the brief/article was merely cumulative of other admissible evidence.

In State v. Gordon, the Court will consider whether joinder of indictments is per se prejudicial when the joinder results in the disqualification of a defendant's retained counsel. In other words, does an otherwise-proper joinder of indictments become structural error when the effect is to disqualify the defendant's counsel of choice. The Eighth District said that the answer was yes, and reversed Gordon's conviction after the joinder of separate indictments of Gordon resulted in Gordon's retained counsel being disqualified because he was a material witness in the second indictment.

Finally, the Court accepted the State's appeal in State v. Johnson and held it for the decision in State v. Brown. Brown is a certified conflict case that asks whether a post-release control notification must inform a defendant at the time of sentencing that the commission of a felony during post-release control allows the court to impose a new prison term for the violation, which is served consecutively with any prison term for the new felony. Put differently, must a court notify the defendant that committing a felony while on post-release control could subject that person to consecutive terms for both the fact of a violation and the commission of a new offense.

Brown will be fully briefed in May. Schwartz and Gordon will be fully briefed in late July or August.