Appellate

Overview

Weston Hurd’s Appellate Practice Group is comprised of attorneys who devote a substantial portion of their practice to appellate advocacy before Ohio’s various appellate districts, the Ohio Supreme Court, Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal, and the United States Supreme Court.

The breadth and depth of their experience can be demonstrated by these statistics:

• Appellate attorneys have handled several hundred appeals in Federal and State Courts
• Weston Hurd has prepared numerous Amicus Curiae briefs in the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of the Ohio Association of Civil Trial Attorneys and other organizations, including but not limited to:
  • Arbino v. Johnson;
  • Robinson v. Bates;
  • Ponser v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co.;
  • Cole v. Holland

Representative of the complex litigation handled by the Appellate Practice Group is a matter that was decided on October 14, 2014 by the Ohio Supreme Court on the issue of domicile.

On February 20, 2013, the Ohio Supreme Court in a narrow 4 to 3 decision agreed to accept the appeal filed by Weston Hurd attorneys on behalf of Cincinnati Insurance Company in the matter of Spaeth v. State Auto Mut. Ins. Co., Case No. 2012-1866. to decide the following Proposition of Law:

A Person Has Only One Domicile: Where the Person Resides and has the Intent to Remain Permanently and Return to When Away Temporarily (Sturgeon v. Korte, 34 Ohio St. 525 (1878), affirmed and restated).

The Eighth District had concluded that James Schill although having moved to the State of Florida with his spouse, and had returned to Ohio only to operate one of his businesses in the state, was still a domicile of Ohio despite overwhelming evidence of his intent to be domiciled in the State of Florida.

The Weston Hurd attorneys argued before the Ohio Supreme Court that such an individual was actually domiciled in Florida because he had the clear subjective intent to change his domicile to Florida and the objective facts demonstrated a residence in Florida relying on a 1878 decision by the Court, Sturgeon v. Korte, 34 Ohio St. 525 (1878). On October 14, 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed with counsel’s argument:

“We reiterate this court’s previous jurisprudence on the definition of domicile; it is where a person resides, where he intends to remain, and where he intends to return when away temporarily.”

– Schill v. Cincinnati Ins. Co., 2014-Ohio-4527