March 04, 2007

Last November the Ohio Supreme Court interpreted the state's Consumer Sales Practices Act, which already allowed treble damages, to permit awards for noneconomic damages as well for aggrieved consumers. The state legislature moved to correct this interpretation, but its effort to do so got caught in the legislative and constitutional train wreck occasioned by incoming Gov. Ted Strickland's attempt to veto liability legislation that outgoing Gov. Taft assumed had become law without his signature. Jones Day has a paper on the extreme uncertainties that afflict the liability climate for some lines of business in Ohio until the whole mess gets resolved (via Jonathan B. Wilson).