Court Opinion

ID: 9483836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:32:50.693405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:51.794280
License: Public Domain

MILBURN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully disagree with the majority of this panel in its decision to discharge our order to show cause why this appeal should not be dismissed without imposing any sanctions. I would dismiss the appeal for plaintiffs’ failure to prosecute.
The facts are accurately stated by the majority in the order discharging the show cause order except that a material circumstance is omitted. After the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed the certified question for plaintiffs’ failure to file the necessary brief, counsel for plaintiffs petitioned that court to reconsider its dismissal for failure to prosecute and urged before it those same excuses he now makes to us. The Supreme Court of Ohio rejected those excuses, and so should we.
Section 7 of Rule XVI, Ohio Supreme Court Rules of Practice, unequivocally states that briefs shall be filed within twenty days of the filing of the certification order. Counsel admits reading this rule; however, rather than filing a brief as the rule commands, he instructed his secretary to telephone the clerk of the Supreme Court of Ohio for some clarification of the rules. When informed by his secretary that an unidentified person in the clerk’s office had advised her that no brief was necessary, counsel took no further action. To ignore the Supreme Court of Ohio’s rule by virtue of a secretary’s telephone call to a clerk is, to me, not only irresponsible but unexcusable neglect on the part of plaintiffs’ counsel.
As a result of the Supreme Court of Ohio’s dismissal of the certification for want of prosecution, this court has been thwarted in its efforts to obtain the answer to a question of Ohio law which we thought would have been determinative of plaintiffs’ claims. Accordingly, pursuant to Rule 3(a) of the Rules of Appellate Procedure, I would dismiss this appeal for plaintiffs’ failure to prosecute. In this connection, see also Rule 31(c) of the Rules of Appellate Procedure and Rule 15.8 of the Internal Operating Procedures of the Sixth Circuit (June 12, 1991).