What Was The Makeup Of The Supreme Court In 2008
Opinion from the Columbus Dispatch and the Butler County Journal-News, Oct 11, 2020
Past Tom Suddes, Contributed Commentary
Depending on what voters decide, injured Ohioans, and Ohio's utility customers, might, or might not, come out ahead in November. Two of the Ohio Supreme Court's seven members are running for reelection: Republican Justices Judith French and Sharon Kennedy.
Autonomous Judge Jennifer Brunner, of the Ohio Court of Appeals (10th District), is challenging Justice French'south re-ballot. Democratic Judge John P. O'Donnell, of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Courtroom, is challenging Justice Kennedy's re-ballot.
The Supreme Court is now 5-2 Republican. If Brunner and O'Donnell win, the court would be 4-3 Autonomous,
Ohioans are supposed to think their Supreme Court doesn't have much elbowroom in making decisions: The Ohio Revised Code is merely a big cookbook, and justices only follow its recipes.
Large Business concern, Big Insurance and Big Utilities know better: The court's political makeup can be crucial in keeping things the way they are in Ohio. Maybe, though, keeping things the fashion they are isn't the way things should be.
When a jury in Republican Delaware County heard how a senior pastor forced intercourse on a 15-twelvemonth-old female parishioner in his office, the jury awarded her $3,651,379 in amercement; of that, $iii.v million represented "pain and suffering ... mental ache, and any other intangible loss."
But a 2004 "tort reform" sponsored by and so-state Sen. Steve Stivers, a suburban Columbus Republican now in Congress, forced the lawsuit'southward Common Pleas judge to hammer down the damages to $500,000. And the Supreme Courtroom, in a 2016 plurality determination, said that was OK. Justice French wrote the lead opinion upholding the harm caps. Justice Kennedy concurred in Justice French's opinion.
In fairness, bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court majorities have at times killed anti-injured-person laws. In 1999, 2 Democratic justices and two Republican justices overturned a 1996 "tort reform" (Business firm Bill 350) that tried to slash the damages an injured person could collect and, in a nervy swipe at the judicial branch of state government, also tried to re-pass earlier anti-plaintiff laws judges had spiked.
Lead sponsor of that doomed 1996 "reform" was then-Rep. Patrick Tiberi, a suburban Columbus Republican later in Congress. Small globe: Tiberi's now president of the Ohio Business Roundtable, a group of big companies with "one sole purpose: to amend Ohio's business climate." Tiberi asked roundtable members last calendar month to remind employees it's crucial that Ohio have a "stable" Supreme Courtroom.
Then consider the "heads I win, tails you lose" doctrine Ohio'due south Supreme Court follows when information technology overturns a utility rate that had been OK'd earlier past the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Here's how the no-refund dogma works: The PUCO approves (big surprise) a higher rate that, say, your electric utility wants. Then the electrical company starts collecting the higher rate.
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, the Ohio Supreme Court does sometimes overturn a utility's PUCO-canonical rates. And so: You're a customer. You've been paying the at present-overturned rate. You, the over-charged client, get a refund, right?
Wrong: You don't. A musty Ohio police force, dating back to at least 1911, in a bill creating what's now the PUCO, forbids refunds.
In 1957, in what's known as the Keco case, the Supreme Court entrenched the no-refund provision in case police force. A few years ago, then-Supreme Court Justice Paul Eastward. Pfeifer, a Republican maverick from Bucyrus, denounced the no-refund law when a Supreme Court majority let Ohio units of American Electrical Power Co. go along rather than refund customer coin from an overturned charge per unit.
Justices French and Kennedy concurred in that 2014 no-refund stance, written by a third Republican, and so-Justice Judith Lanzinger. "It is unconscionable," Pfeifer wrote, "that a public utility should be able to retain $368 million that information technology collected from consumers based on assumptions that are unjustified …Kecoshould be overturned."
Unconscionable it is, but that'south still the law of Ohio – unless, someday, an Ohio Supreme Court bulk decides it shouldn't be.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University. Previously, he was a veteran Statehouse reporter for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.
Source: https://www.justicebrunner.com/news/ohio-supreme-court-not-powerless-political-makeup-crucial
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