Court Opinion

ID: 9904917
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-28 14:05:57.134081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:47.100875
License: Public Domain

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State
ex rel. Ames v. Ondrey, Slip Opinion No. 2023-Ohio-4188.]

                                           NOTICE
      This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an
      advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to
      promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65
      South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other
      formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before
      the opinion is published.

                          SLIP OPINION NO. 2023-OHIO-4188
     THE STATE EX REL. AMES, APPELLANT, v. ONDREY, JUDGE, APPELLEE.
  [Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it
          may be cited as State ex rel. Ames v. Ondrey, Slip Opinion No.
                                     2023-Ohio-4188.]
Prohibition—Appellant has adequate remedy in ordinary course of law, and judge
        did not patently and unambiguously exceed his jurisdiction in determining
        before holding statutorily required hearing that appellant had engaged in
        frivolous conduct—Court of appeals’ dismissal of petition affirmed.
 (No. 2023-0254—Submitted October 11, 2023—Decided November 28, 2023.)
    APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Geauga County, No. 2022-G-0044,
                                       2023-Ohio-510.
                                    _________________
        Per Curiam.
        {¶ 1} Appellant, Brian M. Ames, appeals the judgment of the Eleventh
District Court of Appeals dismissing his petition for a writ of prohibition against
appellee, Judge David M. Ondrey of the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas.
                             SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

Ames brought his petition to bar Judge Ondrey from exercising jurisdiction over a
hearing to determine the amount of reasonable attorney fees that Ames owed based
on conduct he had committed that Judge Ondrey found frivolous. The court of
appeals reasoned that prohibition did not lie, because Ames’s petition alleged an
error in Judge Ondrey’s exercise of jurisdiction. We affirm.
                               I. BACKGROUND
       {¶ 2} Ames alleges that in July 2022, he filed an amended complaint against
the Geauga County Republican Central Committee and its chair, Nancy B.
McArthur (collectively, “the committee”), seeking a declaratory judgment and an
injunction based on claims relating to the committee’s alleged violations of Ohio’s
Open Meetings Act, R.C. 121.22. Judge Ondrey granted the committee’s motion
to dismiss, and Ames appealed. Ames represents, without objection from Judge
Ondrey, that his appeal of Judge Ondrey’s dismissal entry is still pending.
       {¶ 3} The committee then filed a motion with Judge Ondrey seeking fees,
costs, and expenses it had incurred in defending against Ames’s lawsuit, which the
committee characterized as frivolous under R.C. 2323.51. In response, Judge
Ondrey issued an order determining that Ames had engaged in frivolous conduct
by filing his complaint against the committee and that a hearing would be held on
the committee’s motion solely for the purpose of determining the amount of
reasonable attorney fees that the committee had incurred in defending against
Ames’s lawsuit. Judge Ondrey later scheduled a hearing for November 16, 2022.
       {¶ 4} On November 7, 2022, Ames filed an original action in the Eleventh
District Court of Appeals seeking a writ of prohibition to prevent Judge Ondrey
from conducting the hearing on the attorney-fees question.          Judge Ondrey
represents, without objection from Ames, that the hearing did not go forward as
scheduled. And based on the record and the parties’ submissions, it does not appear
that a hearing has yet been held.

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                                 January Term, 2023

        {¶ 5} The court of appeals granted Judge Ondrey’s Civ.R. 12(B)(6) motion,
rejecting Ames’s contention that Judge Ondrey exceeded his subject-matter
jurisdiction by failing to strictly comply with the procedures prescribed by R.C.
2323.51. Ames then filed this appeal.
                                   II. ANALYSIS
        {¶ 6} This court reviews de novo a court of appeals’ judgment dismissing a
prohibition petition under Civ.R. 12(B)(6). See State ex rel. Jones v. Paschke, 168
Ohio St.3d 93, 2022-Ohio-2427, 195 N.E.3d 1031, ¶ 5. Dismissal is justified “if it
appears beyond doubt, after presuming the truth of all material factual allegations
in the petition and making all reasonable inferences in his favor, that [the relator]
is not entitled to extraordinary relief in prohibition.” Id. To be entitled to a writ of
prohibition, Ames must establish that (1) Judge Ondrey is about to exercise or has
exercised judicial power, (2) the exercise of that power is unauthorized by law, and
(3) Ames lacks an adequate remedy in the ordinary course of the law. Id. at ¶ 6.
Ames need not satisfy the third element if Judge Ondrey’s lack of jurisdiction is
patent and unambiguous. Id.
   A. Whether the court of appeals departed from the Civ.R. 12(B)(6) standard
        {¶ 7} As his first proposition of law, Ames argues that the court of appeals
departed from the Civ.R. 12(B)(6) standard by failing to presume the truth of his
allegations that (1) Judge Ondrey intended to exercise judicial power and (2) the
exercise of that power would be unauthorized by law. But even assuming that a
court must generally regard the first allegation as presumptively truthful when
considering a Civ.R. 12(B)(6) motion to dismiss, Ames cites no authority holding
that a court must always do so with respect to the second allegation. See Jones at
¶ 5 (the complaint’s material factual allegations must be presumed truthful); State
ex rel. Martre v. Reed, 161 Ohio St.3d 281, 2020-Ohio-4777, 162 N.E.3d 773, ¶ 12
(“unsupported legal conclusions, even when cast as factual assertions, are not
presumed true for purposes of a motion to dismiss”). Moreover, as we explain

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                             SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

below, Judge Ondrey did not patently and unambiguously exceed his jurisdiction.
Thus, even if we construed Ames’s two allegations as presumptively truthful, he
would not be entitled to the relief he seeks.
       {¶ 8} We reject Ames’s first proposition of law.
        B. Whether Judge Ondrey exceeded his subject-matter jurisdiction
       {¶ 9} Ames’s second, third, and fourth propositions of law argue that Judge
Ondrey exceeded his subject-matter jurisdiction by determining before holding a
hearing as prescribed by R.C. 2323.51 that Ames had engaged in frivolous conduct.
       {¶ 10} R.C. 2323.51(B)(1) generally provides that a court may award
reasonable attorney fees to any party to a civil action who was adversely affected
by frivolous conduct. But before the court may make the award, it must schedule
a hearing, provide notice of the hearing, and conduct the hearing as prescribed by
law. R.C. 2323.51(B)(2). The purpose of the hearing is “to determine whether
particular conduct was frivolous, to determine, if the conduct was frivolous,
whether any party was adversely affected by it, and to determine, if an award is to
be made, the amount of that award.” R.C. 2323.51(B)(2)(a).
       {¶ 11} Even assuming that Judge Ondrey erred in making his frivolous-
conduct finding before holding the statutorily required hearing, Judge Ondrey did
not exceed his jurisdiction in doing so. “Prohibition will generally lie only for an
absence of subject-matter jurisdiction.” State ex rel. Nyamusevya v. Hawkins, 165
Ohio St.3d 22, 2021-Ohio-1122, 175 N.E.3d 495, ¶ 16. Thus, “a court will typically
‘deny relief in prohibition when a respondent judge has general subject-matter
jurisdiction and will deem any error by the judge to be an error in the exercise of
that jurisdiction.’ ” Santomauro v. McLaughlin, 168 Ohio St.3d 272, 2022-Ohio-
2441, 198 N.E.3d 87, ¶ 14, quoting State ex rel. Sponaugle v. Hein, 153 Ohio St.3d
560, 2018-Ohio-3155, 108 N.E.3d 1089, ¶ 24. “When this court has determined
that a ‘court of common pleas patently and unambiguously lacks jurisdiction, it is
almost always because a statute explicitly removed that jurisdiction.’ ” Id., quoting

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                                 January Term, 2023

Ohio High School Athletic Assn. v. Ruehlman, 157 Ohio St.3d 296, 2019-Ohio-
2845, 136 N.E.3d 436, ¶ 9.
       {¶ 12} Here, Ames does not argue that a court lacks jurisdiction after
issuing a final, appealable order to determine whether a party committed frivolous
conduct under R.C. 2323.51. Instead, he argues that a court exceeds its jurisdiction
when it fails to comply with the statute’s procedural requirements. Ames is
mistaken, for “ ‘when a specific action is within a court’s subject-matter
jurisdiction, any error in the exercise of that jurisdiction renders the judgment
voidable, not void,’ ” State ex rel. Romine v. McIntosh, 162 Ohio St.3d 501, 2020-
Ohio-6826, 165 N.E.3d 1262, ¶ 15, quoting State v. Harper, 160 Ohio St.3d 480,
2020-Ohio-2913, 159 N.E.3d 248, ¶ 26; see also State ex rel. Enyart v. O’Neill, 71
Ohio St.3d 655, 656, 646 N.E.2d 1110 (1995) (“the fact that [a judge] may have
exercised [her] jurisdiction erroneously does not give rise to extraordinary relief by
prohibition”).
       {¶ 13} The text of R.C. 2323.51 specifies that a court has the authority to
make a frivolous-conduct determination. Thus, even if Judge Ondrey erred by
making that determination before holding a hearing, that action was an error in the
exercise of jurisdiction, not an action in excess of jurisdiction.
       {¶ 14} Because Judge Ondrey’s application of R.C. 2323.51 is one that can
be corrected on appeal, Ames has an adequate remedy in the ordinary course of the
law that defeats his entitlement to the writ. See Jones, 168 Ohio St.3d 93, 2022-
Ohio-2427, 195 N.E.3d 1031, at ¶ 10. Ames’s claim that Judge Ondrey committed
a due-process violation by misapplying R.C. 2323.51, which he weaves into his
jurisdictional arguments, does not change the analysis. See id. (holding that the
relator’s deprivation-of-due-process claim was redressable by way of appeal).
       {¶ 15} We reject Ames’s second, third, and fourth propositions of law.

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                           SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

                             III. CONCLUSION
       {¶ 16} Judge Ondrey did not patently and unambiguously exceed his
jurisdiction. We affirm the Eleventh District Court of Appeals’ judgment.
                                                             Judgment affirmed.
       KENNEDY, C.J., and FISCHER, DEWINE, DONNELLY, STEWART, BRUNNER,
and DETERS, JJ., concur.
                              _________________
       Brian M. Ames, pro se.
       James R. Flaiz, Geauga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Linda M.
Applebaum, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
                              _________________

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