BuckeyeBlog

A couple weeks ago, I posted here regarding the Manhattan Institute’s recent report on the improvement Ohio has made in reforming its civil liability laws. The report briefly mentions two cases in which the Ohio Supreme Court upheld recently enacted reforms of Ohio’s tort system. I discuss those two cases in more detail in the just released summer issue of the Federalist Society’s State Court Docket Watch (the article on the Ohio cases begins on page 2 under “Case in Focus”). As the Manhattan Institute’s report indicates, the recently enacted tort reforms, including placing caps on pain and suffering damages and time limits on liability, are critical if Ohio is going to be successful in making the state attractive again for investment and business activity. Interestingly, in one of the recent cases, Arbino v. Johnson v. Johnson, the portion of the decision upholding the cap on pain and suffering damages was by a 5-2 majority. Two of the justices in the majority, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Maureen O’Connor, are up for reelection in 2008. If they are defeated and replaced by more activist justices, the court might then have a majority that would be willing to strike down the caps on damages enacted by the General Assembly. That would be a major step backward for Ohio.

Tags: Election, Ohio Supreme Court, tort reform

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 10:18 am and is filed under Constitutional Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.