In Inside Courts, retired judge Tom Hodson explains the complexities of the law and legal cases, helping you understand what’s at stake — and how it affects you.
As we await action from the Supreme Court of Ohio on the latest Nelsonville appeal, it’s worth noting that the question of which city government should prevail –– statutory or charter –– has been before almost all the various courts in our jurisdiction at least once, and sometimes twice or more.
All these lawsuits have one common thread: No court, to date, has rendered the ultimate decision of which government should prevail.
Should it be the one –– statutory –– decided by the voters in a referendum in November 2024? Or the one –– charter –– that remained in place after the city council passed an ordinance in summer 2025 that nullified the vote of the people?
We have traveled through this legal maze several times in this column and I’m not going to take that trip again today.
Instead, it might be a good time to explain what the various Ohio courts do and why a certain court might be involved in an ongoing saga like Nelsonville’s.
In our country, we have two judicial systems: federal courts and state courts.
Ohio has a multi-tiered judicial system with two kinds of trial courts and two types of appellate courts. (Mayors’ courts still exist to some degree, but we are not going to discuss those today.)
Unlike in many states, where judges are appointed, all judges in Ohio are elected for six-year terms.
Federal court judges are all appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. These are lifetime appointments. There are no terms of office.
Every court, whether appellate or trial, has two types of jurisdictions. Territorial jurisdiction demarcates the geographical area where a court has dominion. Subject matter jurisdiction determines what kinds of cases a court is allowed to decide.
Today, we will examine Ohio’s court system. We will leave the federal system for a future column. There is part of one Nelsonville case in the federal district court in Columbus, but it is on hold until the state courts make some decisions on who is to govern.
Ohio trial courts
A trial court is just what its name implies. It is where most of the initial decisions happen in a case.
A trial court has trials to the bench or jury trials. It includes witnesses, testimony, exhibits and the initial decisions of who wins or loses in a case.
Municipal court
The lowest level trial court in Ohio is a municipal court or county court. Sometimes those two are combined, as in the Athens County Municipal Court. For our discussion, we’ll treat county and municipal courts the same. (Although there are slight differences, they are not worth cluttering our landscape with today.)
The territorial jurisdiction of a municipal court is determined by the Ohio General Assembly, as are the number of judge positions assigned to a particular court.
Athens has one municipal court judge: Judge Todd Grace. The territorial jurisdiction of the Athens County Municipal Court is all of Athens County.
The subject matter jurisdiction is limited. On the criminal side, municipal court has the power to hear misdemeanor (minor) criminal cases from beginning to end. Things like disorderly conduct, trespass, petty theft, assault and more serious matters like domestic violence are heard.
Municipal court also handles traffic cases, including speeding and driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
It also can handle the preliminary parts of felony cases, such as the defendant’s initial appearance in court to set bail and a preliminary hearing (known as a probable cause hearing) to determine if the case is sufficient to send to a grand jury for further consideration.
The court also has jurisdiction over civil cases where the amount in dispute does not exceed $15,000 and small claims cases where the total amount in dispute may not exceed $6,000. It also handles landlord/tenant disputes and the issuance of temporary protection orders
Unless I am mistaken, I believe this is the only court that the Nelsonville saga has not played out. But there is still time.
Common pleas court
All common pleas courts in Ohio are established under the Ohio Constitution. Each of Ohio’s 88 counties has one common pleas court, so the territorial jurisdiction is county-wide.
The number of judges for each common pleas court is determined by the General Assembly. Common pleas courts can be divided into four divisions: general, probate, juvenile, and domestic.
Athens County has two divisions: general, including domestic relations, and probate/juvenile. There are two general division judges, Judge George McCarthy and Judge Patrick Lang, and one probate/juvenile judge, Judge Zach Saunders.
The domestic relations section of the common court handles divorces, dissolutions of marriage, and matters of child support and child custody.
The probate division oversees the distribution of the estates of deceased individuals plus guardianships, adoptions, and mental illness commitments. It also issues marriage licenses.
The juvenile court has power over cases involving minors, including traffic offenses, delinquency and unruliness, abuse, neglect, and abandonment cases.
Now, for the subject matter jurisdiction. Common pleas courts handle all felony trials and the disposition of felony criminal cases including death penalty cases.
The court has jurisdiction over major civil cases when the amount in controversy is over $15,000. This includes major business cases, personal injury cases, medical malpractice cases, and other types of complex litigation.
The court also has the jurisdiction to review administrative decisions of various local boards and commissions in each county.
It also has special jurisdiction over certain kinds of cases. A common pleas court can issue temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and permanent injunctive relief. Remember, an injunction is a court order for a party to do a particular act or cease from doing an act.
Additionally, a common pleas court can issue a writ of mandamus and a declaratory judgment. A writ of mandamus is a legal order by a court ordering a public official or governmental body to perform a mandatory duty required by law. Sound familiar to some of the Nelsonville cases?
A writ of mandamus can be filed in the state supreme court, a district court of appeals, or a common pleas court.
A common pleas court also decides declaratory judgment cases. A declaratory judgment is a court order declaring the legal rights, duties, or status of parties.
If you recall, in the Nelsonville cases in common pleas court parties have been asking the court to decide who should be in power. However, for various procedural reasons, the court has refused to make that decision.
Ohio appellate courts
There are two types of appellate courts in Ohio: the intermediate level appellate courts and the supreme court.
District court of appeals
There are 12 district courts of appeals in Ohio. Athens County is in the Fourth District Court of Appeals, which encompasses 14 counties stretching along the Ohio River from the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati to the west to Marietta, to the east and as far north as Circleville.
The territorial jurisdiction of the district courts of appeals is determined by the Ohio General Assembly as well as how many judges will be elected to each court.
Every criminal defendant who loses a case and every losing party to a civil case has a right to one appeal and that appeal goes to the district court of appeals.
The appellate court sits in three-judge panels to determine whether the lower court judge made mistakes and whether those mistakes were significant enough to potentially change the outcome of the case.
In addition to its appellate powers, a district court of appeals also has some original jurisdiction over five types of cases: writ of prohibition, writ of mandamus, writ of habeas corpus, writ of procedendo and writ of quo warranto.
Some of this jurisdiction over special matters is concurrent with a common pleas court — meaning that the party bringing the action has a choice of what court to go to first.
I’m only going to focus on the power to issue a writ of mandamus and a writ of quo warranto. I’ve previously explained that a writ of mandamus and a writ of quo warranto are procedures that ask the court to remove someone from office who holds it illegally.
The statutory office holders in Nelsonville most recently asked the Fourth District Court of Appeals to issue a quo warranto removing the charter people from office. They skipped over the common pleas court and went right to the court of appeals.
However, the appellate court said it could not issue such a writ because the Athens County Common Pleas Court had not issued a declaratory judgment on who should rightfully govern.
The statutory group disagreed with the decision and appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Ohio.
The Supreme Court of Ohio
This court, with statewide jurisdiction, consists of seven justices elected for six-year terms on a partisan ballot from across Ohio. The political makeup of the current court is six Republicans and one Democrat.
The supreme court is the highest appellate court in Ohio and generally it can pick and choose what cases it wants to hear. Generally, it takes cases of major constitutional consequence or cases in which two or more of the district courts of appeals have decided the same issue differently. The high court will take a case to resolve those conflicts.
There are a few instances where the supreme court must take a case. It’s called an appeal as of right. For example, the court must decide appeals from a writ of mandamus case and a writ of quo warranto that has been originally filed with a district court of appeals.
That is why the state supreme court is now considering the appeal of the statutory government officials of Nelsonville.
The supreme court also has concurrent original jurisdiction over the issuance of writs that can be filed in a court of appeals. The party bringing the action decides whether to bring the action directly to the supreme court or file it in the court of appeals or common pleas court.
In the Nelsonville case, the statutory office holders chose to file the quo warranto action in the district court of appeals instead of the supreme court. Therefore, they have an appeal as of right to the Ohio Supreme Court.
If you recall, however, way back when the Athens County Board of Elections first certified the statutory candidates, the charter group went directly to the supreme court asking the court to remove the statutory people from the ballot. The court refused on two occasions to do so and that started the onslaught of subsequent litigation.
What’s next
Right now, we wait for the supreme court to determine who should run Nelsonville’s government. All other cases are on hold until that one is decided over the next few months.
I hope my trip through your Athens County legal system was helpful. But I know one question remains and that is: “Why does all of this take so long?”
I wish I had a simple answer, but I don’t. That question is grist for a future column on the glacial progress of American justice.
