Thursday, August 24, 2017

A milestone

Today marks the first anniversary of the Ohio Appellate Counsel blog. I've written more than 80 posts discussing more than 50 cases. I've spent more time covering the Ohio Supreme Court than I expected to, and less time covering the district courts of appeals than I expected to. Will that shift in Year Two? I hope so; stick with me to find out.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

State v. Blair dismissed as moot

Today the court dismissed State v. Blair, which was noted as a newly accepted case in this blog post from May. The issue in Blair related to record-sealing, formerly known as "expungement"; an applicant is not eligible for sealing if she has a "pending criminal matter" at the time of the application. Blair's application was denied because she was on community control for a different offense at the time she applied. The question presented to the Court was whether community control constituted a "pending criminal matter." (The trial court and the First District had held that the answer was yes.) The State moved to dismiss the case as moot, because Blair's community control period was terminated earlier this year, and the Court agreed.

The State preemptively argued that the case was not capable of repetition yet evading review, because while Blair's community control was relatively short (one year), Ohio law authorizes community control period of up to five years, so the issue was bound to be raised eventually in another case. We'll keep our eyes open for that one.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Supreme Court case announcements, 7/26/17

Four new accepted cases today. Interestingly, all four cases have noted dissents regarding whether to accept the case or which propositions of law to hear. Three of the four are from the Eighth District. (Update: and certified conflicts, too.)

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Follow-up: Fisher v. Doe

In December I wrote that Tom Haren and I had filed an amicus brief in the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of our client Alexandria Goddard. We asked the Court, in Fisher v. Doe, to adopt the Dendrite International standard for cases in which a subpoena seeks to unmask anonymous internet speech.

Today the Court declined to accept the case by a 4-2 margin. Justices French and O'Neill dissented. Justice Fischer, who was on the First District panel that decided the case in October, did not participate.

We are disappointed, obviously. The First Amendment's protection extends as equally to anonymous and pseudonymous speech as it does to speech from identified sources, and this is no less true for online speech than it is for speech in newspapers, pamphlets, or any other media. We will continue to keep our eyes open for candidates to place the Dendrite issue before the Ohio Supreme Court and courts of appeals. If you are aware of any, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Supreme Court case announcement, 7/5/17

Today the Court announced that it has accepted discretionary appeals in two criminal cases.