The Court will no longer consider “public right” cases where parties file lawsuits even when they had not been personally injured.

The Court will no longer consider “public right” cases where parties file lawsuits even when they had not been personally injured.

The Supreme Court of Ohio today rejected a controversial 1999 precedent that had allowed litigants to file lawsuits even when they had not been injured. The Court made clear that the Ohio Constitution requires that an individual have standing—that is, suffered an injury in fact—to file a lawsuit.

A divided Supreme Court affirmed a Third District Court of Appeals decision, finding a Findlay property owner lacked standing to sue all the judges in the Findlay Municipal Court and the Hancock County Common Pleas Court for hearing cases regarding unpaid municipal income taxes. George Martens, who had no legal action against him pending at the time, argued he had the right to file the lawsuit as a taxpayer and by invoking the public-right doctrine.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice R. Patrick DeWine explained the Supreme Court adopted the public-right doctrine in its 1999 State ex rel. Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers v. Sheward decision. The decision created an exception to the standing requirement. The ruling allowed a person to seek the “enforcement or protection of a public right” in a case “where the issues to be litigated are of great importance and interest to the public.”

Since the Sheward decision, the Court has not allowed any party to rely on the public-right doctrine to initiate a case before the Supreme Court in more than 20 years, the opinion noted. The opinion stated that the Sheward decision was a departure from the “deeply rooted standing requirement and the Ohio Constitution.”

“It was wrong when it was decided and remains wrong today,” Justice DeWine wrote. “Today we expressly overrule Sheward and decline to allow Martens to rely on its exception to the standing requirement.”

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices Patrick F. Fischer and Joseph T. Deters joined Justice DeWine’s opinion.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Jennifer Brunner agreed that Martens had no grounds for a lawsuit, but asserted the Court should not use the case to overrule Sheward. She noted the Third District did not discuss Sheward in its decision, and the judges that Martens sued did not ask for Sheward to be overruled.

Justices Michael P. Donnelly and Melody Stewart joined Justice Brunner’s opinion.

Property Owner Disputes Tax Collection
Martens owns rental property in Findlay and pays taxes to the city. In 2023, he sought a writ of mandamus from the Third District asking it to direct the municipal and common pleas court judges to cease hearing certain tax proceedings. Martens claimed that under state law, the local courts did not have jurisdiction over cases in which the government sought to recover unpaid municipal income taxes.

Martens did not state that he was part of any pending tax action when he filed his case. The judges asked the Third District to dismiss the case, arguing Martens lacked standing. The Third District dismissed the case and Martens appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Court noted that standing is a requirement to file a lawsuit, and stated it could resolve Martens’ case by addressing the issue of whether he had standing.

Supreme Court Analyzed Standing Claim
Justice DeWine explained the Ohio Constitution gives the Court limited power by granting only “judicial power.” “The judicial power is the power to decide specific cases between conflicting parties,” he wrote, and this means the Court “can only decide actual controversies between parties legitimately affected by specific facts.”

To bring a case, a party must have standing, which means that a party must show an “actual injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s conduct and that it is likely that a court can redress the injury.” When seeking a writ of mandamus, Martens must show he would directly benefit or be injured by a judgment in the case. The injury must be personal, and the plaintiff must suffer a particular harm that is different than some general harm suffered by the public at large, the opinion noted.

Martens did not argue he suffered personally from the local judges’ actions. Instead, he claimed he could bring his lawsuit as a concerned taxpayer through “public right” standing. Martens cited the Sheward decision to claim the matter was of such great importance and interest to the public that the Third District could rule on his request.

Sheward Decision Raised Concerns
Sheward involved a challenge to Ohio General Assembly legislation regarding tort reform, which made significant changes to how courts handle personal injury lawsuits. Rather than challenge the new law in the context of a particular local case with a personally injured plaintiff, the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers, a trade association, sought a writ from the Supreme Court to prohibit six common pleas court judges from following the new law. The association also asked the Court to declare the tort reform law unconstitutional.

The Sheward Court acknowledged the traditional standing requirement, but created an exception for the enforcement or protection of a public right. A person need not show any legal or special individual interest in the result of the matter, but only needed to be an Ohio citizen interested in the “execution of the laws of this state,” the Court stated in Sheward.

Three justices dissented and argued that public-right standing was contrary to the powers granted to the Supreme Court in the Ohio Constitution. Then-Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer stated the association was in effect seeking a declaratory judgment that found the tort reform law was unconstitutional, and the Court does not have the power to grant such an order. Rather, the proper course was for a party personally impacted by the law to file a case in a trial court to challenge the law’s constitutionality, the opinion explained.

The opinion noted that the Sheward decision had been roundly criticized by legal scholars after its issuance, being described as “an example of the abusive use of judicial power” and contrary to separation of powers principles.   

The opinion noted the Court has only explicitly used the public-right doctrine in one other case following Sheward, which was a 2002 decision involving the constitutionality of reforms of state workers’ compensation laws.

“Since 2002, we have not conferred Sheward public-right standing in a single case. Instead, we have recognized the public-right doctrine as an anomaly in our caselaw, but have stopped short of overruling Sheward,” the opinion stated.

The opinion stated the doctrine is so vague that it is nearly impossible to apply. The opinion questioned how the Court determines which issues are of such great importance and interest to the public that they get to bypass the standing requirement or other normal judicial procedures. The Court noted it has “had to jump through hoops to avoid” applying the doctrine, and that it was time to end its use.

The Court affirmed the Third District’s decision that Martens also did not meet the requirements to bring a taxpayer lawsuit, which is authorized by state law. Martens argued he had taxpayer standing because the courts in Hancock County were illegally expending taxpayer money to hear cases in which they lacked jurisdiction. The Court explained that Martens had failed to show that he had statutory authorization to bring the case or any special interest in the court funds that were being allegedly misused.

Case Not Appropriate for Considering Public-Right Standing, Concurrence Maintained
In her concurring opinion, Justice Brunner noted that Martens is a non-attorney who represented himself in the appeal. With the minimal amount of briefing provided by the parties in the case, and with no mention in the lower court’s decision of Sheward, it was not appropriate for the Court to eliminate public-right standing and that “the majority opinion comes across as sneaky and constrained,” she wrote.

While not taking a position on whether Sheward should remain, the concurrence stated there was no reason to overrule it today, and the majority opinion’s discussion of “Sheward is woefully deficient – to the point of being affirmatively misleading.”

The Court agreed in 1999 to hear Sheward after an unprecedented attempt by the General Assembly to reenact laws that the Court had just struck down as unconstitutional, the concurrence explained. The justices then agreed to hear the case because it impacted more than 27,000 tort cases pending in trial courts, whose outcomes became uncertain based on the changing law, the concurrence stated.

As noted by the majority, the Court has been able to limit the use of public-right standing. The question of whether Sheward should be overruled should be reserved for a more appropriate case where the parties have debated the issue, the concurrence concluded.

2024-0122. State ex rel. Martens v. Findlay Mun. Court, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5667.

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