Chapter XVII: The Administrative Structure of The Court

I. The Trial Court Level

A. Small Claims Division

At the bottom, the lowest level is Small Claims Court. Small Claims Courts are a division of the Municipal Court. At the time of this writing, Small Claims Courts in Ohio can hear cases where the amount in controversy does not exceed Three Thousand Dollars. There is no Judge in Small Claims Court. There is someone who looks, acts, talks and walks like a Judge. This person is called the Magistrate. This person is also sometimes called the Referee (not because he officiates at football games, but because the matter has been referred to him by the Judge). For the purposes of this section, I will refer to Referees as Magistrates.

The Magistrate is someone who works for the Judge, and whom the Judge has vested with certain judicial powers to hear the facts of a case and write up a report for the Judge. The Magistrates will often conduct their proceedings in a very loose way, and there is usually no real need for attorneys. The Magistrate is usually a lawyer, and will sometimes protect one side from the other if one side has a lawyer and the other does not.

You have no right to a jury in Small Claims Court. The rules of Civil Procedure and Evidence are as relaxed as the Magistrate wants to let them be. You cannot recover punitive damages or attorneys fees in Small Claims Court unless you are suing for return of your security deposit.

B. Regular Division of Municipal Court

The regular division of the Municipal Court has a jurisdictional limit of up to Fifteen Thousand Dollars. This means that it can hear cases and controversies wherein Fifteen Thousand Dollars or less is at stake. These cases are presided over by Judges and there is the option of a jury. Be warned that if you want a jury, you will have to ask for one up front, and there may be a requirement that you put down a jury deposit. The formal rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure will be in force, and you will be at a profound disadvantage without an attorney who is well versed in those rules. The Municipal Court is a division of the Court of Common Pleas.

C. The Court of Common Pleas

Don’t let the name fool you. There is nothing common about the Court of Common Pleas. On the contrary, this is the grand daddy of all Ohio Trial Courts. There is no jurisdictional limit in this Court. When you read about a jury awarding someone Five Gazillion Dollars, that judgment was rendered in the Court of Common Pleas. The rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure are always in effect here, and you are a fool to come to this Court without a lawyer.

II. Appellate Level Courts

If you lose your case at the Trial Court Level, and you think that you lost it because the Judge made an error in one of his legal rulings, then you can appeal the case to the Court of Appeals for your District. There are Twelve Appellate Districts in Ohio, and your county falls under one of them. Understand up front that the Court of Appeals does not conduct a new trial. There will be no evidence presented to the Court of Appeals. Rather, you will be arguing that the Judge in your trial court made an error of law that affected the outcome and that he should be reversed. The Court of Appeals may order that you get a new trial in accordance with their instructions on the law (hopefully not in front of the same Judge, although that happens), but there will be no new trial during the appeal.

In fact, the Supreme Court of Ohio has held that “judgments supported by some competent, credible evidence going to all the essential elements of the case will not be reversed by a reviewing court as being against the manifest weight of the evidence.” C.E. Morris Co. v. Foley Construction Co. (1978), 54 Ohio St.2d 279, 376 N.E.2d 578, syllabus. When conducting this review, an appellate court must not re-weigh the evidence or “substitute its judgment for that of the trial court when there exists *** competent and credible evidence supporting the findings of fact and conclusions of law rendered by the trial judge.” Seasons Coal Co. v. Cleveland (1984), 10 Ohio St.3d 77, 80, 461 N.E.2d 1273. “The underlying rationale of giving deference to the findings of the trial court rests with the knowledge that the trial judge is best able to view the witnesses and observe their demeanor, gestures and voice inflections, and use these observations in weighing the credibility of the proffered testimony.” Id.

It has been said that the Trial Court judges the evidence, and the Appeals Court judges the Judge. The Appeals Court will not hear your appeal, or will be extremely unlikely to decide your appeal if your appeal is based upon the fact that the Trial Court judge or the jury believed the wrong person or believed the wrong facts. Appeals Courts are more likely to reverse a lower court’s decision if you can show them that the Trial Judge violated a rule of Evidence or Civil Procedure in coming to his decision.

But even if the Judge did violate said rule, you will have to then contend with the Doctrine of Harmless Error. This Doctrine states that even if the Trial Judge messed up, if the case would have been decided against you anyway, then the lower result will be allowed to stand. There is also what is called the Abuse of Discretion Standard. Just because the Trial Court messed up, this is not enough. The mess up should be serious enough that it actually amounts to an abuse of the Trial Court’s discretion. On appeal, you must show that the Trial Court was making its rulings in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This is all really good news if you won at the Trial Court level and your landlord is appealing the case. But is sucks to be you if you are the appellant.

Further, if you did not object at the Trial Court level to the Judge’s ruling that you felt to be mistaken, then you will be found to have waived the right to appeal on that issue. Someone who wishes to appeal an issue must first bring it to the trial court’s attention to give it a chance to do the right thing. If you do not, then you have waived. An example might be helpful. You are in a traffic case where you claim that the light was green, and your opponent claims that the light was red. Your opponent asks the police officer who responded to the accident what a witness at the accident said to him later on about what color the light was. If you fail to object to this testimony (it is likely hearsay), then you will not be able to later bring up the argument on appeal that the Judge should not have allowed the police officer to testify as to what the witness said. You have waived the objection by not objecting at the time.

But the opposite is true if you are the appellee (you won at trial level). If the Appeals Court finds that the Trial Court erred as a matter of law, you can argue that there are other reasons why you should have won, and the Appeals Court will uphold the Trial Court if there is any other argument (made or not at the trial court level) that supports your case and has been proved. To take the above example, the Appeals Court might find some evidence in the record that the witness to the traffic accident was very excited when he spoke to the police officer. In that case, the Appeals Court may rule that the Trial Court could have found that the statement of the witness was an excited utterance, which is an exception to the hearsay rule.

III. Citation to Legal Authority

There are three types of legal authority. The first is the Ohio Constitution. The Ohio Constitution is the legal authority that sets up the state government. It allows the Legislature to pass certain laws. All laws must comply with the Ohio Constitution. Any laws that violate it are ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The second type of legal authority are statutes as enacted by the Ohio Legislature. The Ohio Legislature is empowered to pass laws for our health, safety, morals and welfare, and so it does. It is up to the Courts to determine both the meaning of these laws, and if they are constitutional.

The third type of legal authority is the judicial system and its case law decisions. There is no way for a statute to be perfectly specific enough to cover every possible situation that might arise. Such statutes would be too long to read or find the law. Even if you could make a statute that specific, times would change and require change in the law. For instance, if there were a law that prohibited the carrying of a firearm unless the carrier were transporting large amounts of cash, how do we define the term “large”? In 1850, Twenty Five Dollars was a huge amount of cash, and certainly would have qualified. Nowadays, junior high schoolers carry that much home from mowing the neighbor’s yard.

As stated above, there are three levels of Courts. At the highest level is the Ohio Supreme Court. All Courts below it are bound to follow its decisions. If a Trial Court ignores a case that has been decided by the Ohio Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals will almost certainly reverse them.
Below the Ohio Supreme Court are the Appellate Courts. There are Twelve Appellate Districts in Ohio. Some Appellate Districts cover only one very populous county (such as the Tenth Appellate District in Franklin County). But some appellate districts, such as the Fourth Appellate District, cover several counties, including Athens, Jackson, and Gallia Counties.

When these Appellate District Courts issue decisions, two things can happen to the decisions. If the powers that be think that the case is important enough, then it gets reported in the Ohio Appellate Reporter. As such, you will see a citation to such a case that looks like this: Smith v. Jones (1988), 41 Ohio App.3d 35. This is telling you that the case is in the 41st volume of the Ohio Appellate Reporter, Third Edition, on page 35. Don’t bother looking that one up, because I made it up. If a case gets reported, then it is binding authority within that Appellate District and all of the Trial Courts therein must follow it or be reversed.

Even though a case is reported, other appellate districts are not bound to follow it. For example, there is a case called Cubbon v. Locker (1982), 5 Ohio App.3d 200, which says that if the landlord evicts the tenants during the rental term, then the tenants do not have to pay rent for the remainder of the rental term. This is a reported case and is binding authority upon all trial courts in the Sixth Appellate District (including Lucas County).

But the case of Briggs v. McSwain (1986), 31 Ohio App.3d 85, is also a reported case and has ruled in the exact opposite fashion, saying that just because a landlord evicts someone for a breach of the lease, the tenant is still responsible for the rent until the end of the original lease term or until the apartment is re-rented, which ever is sooner. So don’t go quoting Cubbon to Franklin County Judges because Briggs is binding authority in the Tenth Appellate District and all of the Trial Courts in Franklin County must follow it. Usually when there is a conflict between Appellate Districts, the Ohio Supreme Court will eventually step in and decide the issue for everyone because it doesn’t seem fair to have the law treat the same factual situations differently in different counties.

In fact, this is what the Ohio Supreme Court did in the case of Dennis v. Morgan (2000), 89 Ohio St.3d 417 wherein the Court stated as follows:

We thus find that R.C. Chapter 1923, in its allowance of separate actions under the lease by both parties does contemplate that lessees are liable to lessors for post-termination rent. We find that Cubbon is therefore flawed.

Cubbon also conflicts with the public policy reasoning of the court in Briggs v. MacSwain (1986), 31 Ohio App. 3d 85, 31 Ohio B. Rep. 126, 508 N.E.2d 1028. That court plainly held that a three-day notice to vacate does not terminate the obligations of the tenant to pay rent for the remainder of the term. The Briggs court considered which party should bear the burden caused by a lessee’s breach of the lease:

“A tenant may not avoid her obligations under the lease agreement for payment of the rent during the term of the lease, or until a new tenant is secured, by failing to pay her rent and then vacating after she receives the required three-day notice for non-payment of rent.” 31 Ohio App. 3d at 86, 31 Ohio B. Rep. at 127, 508 N.E.2d at 1029.

The breach of the lease in Briggs was failure to pay rent, whereas the breach here was for violating the agreement’s “nondisturbance” clause, but the reasoning is the same. Should a person be able to escape her obligations under a lease by purposefully violating that lease and waiting for the lessor to present her with a three-day notice to vacate? We agree with the Briggs court that the answer to that question is “no.” Otherwise, whenever a lease became unpalatable, a lessee could commit some bad act and thereupon be relieved of the burden of her bargain.

In the present case, the statutory law and public policy are on the side of the landlords, insofar as the recoverability of some rent after termination is concerned. However, the law may not be with them upon remand if they cannot show that they reasonably attempted to relet the property for seven months. A seven-month vacancy strains the limits of reasonableness.

Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the cause to the trial court. Id. at 419-20.

Keep in mind that while a reported Appellate District Court decision is binding upon the Trial Courts in that Appellate District, it is not binding upon the Appellate Court that issued it. The Court that issues a decision can change its mind at anytime, though this is very rare. When an Appeals Court reverses itself, it is admitting that it got things wrong, and no one likes to do that. Also, the Courts like for their decisions to stand for a while so that the law seems predictable rather than haphazard. For example, even though the Justices of the United States Supreme Court of today might not have decided the case of Roe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) the way that the previous Justices decided it long ago, they would be loathe to overturn it because of the principle of stare decisis (meaning that decisions once decided should be allowed to stand so that the law has predictability).

If there is a reported case in your favor that is not from your Appellate District, you can still use it to buttress your arguments. It is called persuasive authority. When you use persuasive authority, you are telling the judge, “Your Honor, there aren’t any controlling cases in this Appellate District which decide this issue, but you may want to see how Appellate District Courts in other areas have come down on the topic. This way, you won’t be going out on a limb.”

Judges don’t like to go out on a limb and make precedent setting decisions. That is how a Judge gets reversed, and getting reversed looks bad. It’s like you boss calling you forward at the company meeting and explaining before everyone how you screwed up your job. A Judge is far less likely to be reversed if he follows another Appellate District’s decision on the matter, and even if he does get reversed, at least he can point to the other decision to show that he wasn’t totally out in left field.

Some cases (referred to as “unreported decisions” or “slip opinions”) are not deemed important enough to make the Ohio Appellate Reporter. These cases though still get picked up by computer legal research companies and they are searchable if you have access to the right database. For every one reported case, there are nine unreported cases. Why don’t these cases get reported? Because the issue may have been decided a long time ago, but the Trial Court just messed up and didn’t rule the correct way. If that is the case, what is the point to telling the world again what the law is? All that is needed is a reiteration of the law to the particular Trial Court that got it wrong so that the case can be re-decided in accord with the law. Unreported cases are binding upon no one, not even other trial courts in the appellate district that issued it. But they are darned persuasive sometimes.

So why are unreported cases of interest? Because lawyers often have to reason by analogy since every factual situation is different. For instance, if there is a case that says that insurance companies cannot enforce clauses in their policies that prevent waiver of the terms of the agreement, then by analogy, landlords seeking to prevent waiver of terms of their rental agreements can’t either. Of course you take the chance when making this argument that the Judge will look over the top of his glasses at you and say, “Sir, insurance policies and rental agreements are apples and oranges.” You may argue back that they are both contracts, but then you are violating the first rule of effective legal representation, never argue with the Judge.

So attorneys would rather have a case that is right on point that says that clauses in leases that seek to prevent waiver of the terms of the lease are unenforceable. There is a lot greater chance of matching your particular factual situation if you have a much larger pool of cases from which to draw. The ocean of unreported cases is a lot bigger than the pool of reported ones.

An unreported case citation will look like this: Mecca Management, Inc. v. Gouse, 1997 Ohio App. LEXIS 5270, (Nov. 21, 1997), Lucas App. No. L-97-1185, unreported. Unreported decisions are persuasive authority only, but once again, they give the Court a peg to hang its robe on if the issue is new to Ohio law.

Ohio Courts will also listen to what Courts from other states have to say on an issue, especially if the law in that state is fairly similar to our own. Ohio has based its Landlord Tenant Act on the model landlord tenant act that has been adopted by several states around the nation. Some states may have slight variations in the law, such as triple damages instead of double damages when it comes to the return of a security deposit, but a Court may be willing to listen to a decision from another state if there are no Ohio decisions on point.

Every now and then, you will get a Trial Court decision that gets reported. This is usually because no previous Court has addressed this particular but important issue. This type of decision is the very definition of persuasive authority, because no Court must follow it. Even the Court that issued it can change its mind months or years down the road.