Listen in as Chris Finney discusses his 8-0 unanimous victory against the Ohio Civil Rights Commission as they attempted to extract money for a tenant in an entirely frivolous case. The conduct of the Ohio Attorney General’s office and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission was shameful and outrageous in this case.
Truth can be stranger than fiction. And the last few weeks at the Finney Law Firm that has been the case.
Yesterday, Chris Finney, Jessica Gibson and Julie Gugino racked up a unanimous jury verdict (8-0) to defeat a case of claimed retaliation in response to a tenant’s claimed request for a disability accommodation that was met with a non-renewal of a residential lease. The case was styled Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Abundant Life Faith Fellowship in front of Judge Christian Jenkins in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. The Civil Rights Commission was also suing the Church’s pastor who had served for 41 years. In candor, the Civil Rights Commission did a terrible job of vetting its own case with a terrible, dishonest plaintiff and a very sympathetic defendant. Its attorneys at trial also were not exactly prepared or stellar.
The Civil Rights Commission case was full of demonstrable untruths about a kind-hearted 74-year-old African American minister who had suffered two strokes. By the testimony of two of her fellow tenants in the building, the complaining tenant had plotted starting fewer than two weeks into her tenancy to drum up a fictitious lawsuit against the landlord as a way to extract money from him — she told this to her fellow tenants. And for a year, she made his life a living hell, with incessant complaints about inadequate heat and fabrication about needing more light for a vision disability (in fact, her complaints about lighting had been adequately addressed early in her tenancy). Dozens of complaints were addressed by visits by with servicemen, engineers, and repairmen to cater to her many whims and incessant gripes. The Cincinnati Health Department came out and confirmed the unit in every room was heated to a comfortable 72°F to 73°F (the tenant lied to the jury — never a good idea — and said the readings were 62°F, 64°F and 66°F).
In the funniest part of the trial, the tenant at first denied and then admitted sending a bizarre text message to the landlord in the depth of winter, after he noticed that the windows of every unit in the building were open, including those of the tenant who constantly complained it was too cold! Here is the text message, grammatical errors and misspellings included:
Yes, her crazy assertion to the landlord was that he must maintain the heat in the unit at 70°F even if the windows of the unit are left open!
Of course Pastor Brown and the Church had to fund the 4-year defense of the Civil Rights Administrative Complaint and the lawsuit, which he did with aplomb, but at great expense. For the benefit of all landlords subject to outrageous prosecutions from obstinate public agencies, he saw this case through to its appropriate and proper end. He refused to be bullied by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the office of the Ohio Attorney General and Housing Opportunities Made Equal (H.O.M.E.) (which manufactured evidence and knowingly lied to the Civil Rights Commissions in “building their case”).
For more information or to avoid being bullied by these same agencies: (a) DO NOT TALK TO THEM in an investigation EVER and (b) contact Jessica Gibson (513.943.5677) for assistance with your case.
As we wrote here, in November the Ohio First District Court of Appeals in White v. Cincinnati unanimously ruled in favor of clients of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and Finney Law Firm in a challenge to the City of Cincinnati’s alarm tax scheme. The City of Cincinnati asked the Ohio Supreme Court to review that decision, a discretionary call by Court. Historically, Ohio’s top Court accepts only about 5% of such cases for consideration.
Today, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept for review the First District decision. Since that was the last stop on the railroad for the City, the inevitable next legal steps are injunction against further collection of the tax, class certification and an order of restitution before Common Pleas Court Judge Wende Cross.
Amazingly, even after the First District ruled that the tax was illegal, through today the City of Cincinnati insisted on continued collection of the tax. So, an injunction by the trial court now will be necessary.
If you are a Cincinnati alarm fee payor, you should be expecting a refund once the amount has been calculated and the procedural hurdles cleared, perhaps later this year. If the City continues to attempt to extract alarm charges from you, respectfully decline and send them this blog entry!
We most value the accolades and appreciation from our clients, but the various legal ratings services are pretty much unanimous that the Finney Law Firm attorneys are superior in their various fields. The latest of these comes from SuperLawyers, a Thompson Reuters rating system.
This year, attorney Bradley M. Gibson was recognized for his skills in the Civil Litigation Category, and Finney Law Firm founder Christopher P. Finney was honored for his work in each of his disciplines of Business Litigation, Land Use/Zoning, Real Estate, Constitutional Law, State, Local & Municipal, and Tax. Each of them are licensed to appear before all Courts in the State of Ohio and the Commonwealth of Kentucky and in the Federal District Court and Appellate Courts in Ohio. Mr. Finney is also licensed before the United States Supreme Court, U.S. Tax Court and in the District of Columbia.
Let us know how we can apply our experience and skill to “Make a Difference” for your legal needs.
If you see a headline about a jury verdict in an employment case, it’s likely to be about a case where an employee was fired. Those are the cases where the impact of discrimination can be the most harmful. A wrongful firing can often cause enormous financial and emotional distress to a family, and the jury verdicts in such cases can sometimes be eye-popping.
But people often forget that federal and state employment laws prohibit discrimination at ALL phases of the employment relationship. They apply at the hiring stage as much as at the termination stage. And they also apply at various stages DURING the employment relationship. When employers make decisions about promotions, for instance, they are required to give opportunities without regard to race, sex, age, disability, etc. The same is true for decisions about pay. Employees cannot be denied raises or other benefits based on these characteristics.
Another example is training. And this can be key. If an employee is denied training opportunities, that in turn can lead to being denied opportunities for advancement later on. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and comparable state laws, provide that employers must not discriminate when making decisions about which employees will be given the chance to learn new skills.
Employers are often mindful of anti-discrimination laws when preparing to terminate employees. They tend to be most fearful of lawsuits when making those kinds of momentous decisions. They sometimes are less careful, however, when making other kinds of employment decisions, and that lack of care can come back to haunt them. Their hiring, promotion, and pay practices and processes are very important as well, and can expose them to significant legal liabilities if they are not even-handed in their application.
Employers are well-advised to have good legal counsel review these process and procedures And employees should be mindful that they have the right to be free from illegal discrimination not just at termination, but at all phases of the employment relationship.
In the law, people aren’t always held to the promises they make. “I promise I’ll marry you,” or “I promise I’ll buy you a car,” are examples of promises the law usually will not enforce.
We are taught to live up to our promises, but in the law a promise is not normally enforceable unless the person making the promise receives something in exchange. If there is an exchange of promises the law usually considers that a contract. In the absence of a contract, however, a promise usually can’t be enforced at law.
But there is an exception. This is called “promissory estoppel.” This phrase means that sometimes a person will be stopped (“estopped”) from breaking a promise they made, even if there was not a contract.
This doctrine can have an interesting application in the field of employment law. If an employer promises an employee something, and the employee takes some action to his or her detriment in reliance on that promise, the employer may be held to the promise it made.
For instance, say an employer is trying to hire someone away from another employer. To get her to come on board the employer promises that the employees will be hired for at least two years. If the employee leaves her former employer in reliance on the promise of at least a two-year employment, and if that reliance is reasonable, the employer can be held legally liable if it breaks the promise, even though there was never a contract made.
Another example is when an employer promises an employee a raise and promotion if he transfers to a different city. If the employee uproots his family and moves across country in reliance on that promise, the employer risks a lawsuit for promissory estoppel if it doesn’t live up to what it told the employee about the raise and promotion.
We are often told to “get it in writing” when it comes to promises of future benefits. That’s good advice. But sometimes promises can be enforceable even if they are not made in written form, and even if they do no come in the form of a contract.
Do you own land on one of the seven hills of Cincinnati? Has your downhill neighbor started digging on their land? Has such digging threatened to cause or caused your land to slide? If you answered yes to the preceding questions, then you might be entitled to an injunction or damages due to your neighbor removing the “lateral support” to your land.
This blog post will address a (i) background on lateral support; (ii) neighbor’s liability for removing lateral support from a landowner’s land when such land is in its natural or improved state; and (iii) landowner’s recourse when their land is going to start or starts to slide due to their neighbor’s digging.
The right to lateral support is a landowner’s right to have their land supported laterally by their neighbor’s land. The right varies based on whether the damaged land is natural or improved. Land in its natural state is always entitled to lateral support. However, improved land is not so entitled unless provided by statute or a neighbor negligently removes lateral support. Ohio provides such a statute.
If a neighbor’s digging causes damage (e.g., sliding) to a landowner’s natural land, then the neighbor is liable for the damages that flow from such digging. There is no need for the landowner to show fault; it is a strict liability standard. To prove strict liability, the landowner must show (i) that their land was injured by the removal of its lateral support, (ii) that the injury resulted from the neighbor’s digging, and (iii) ascertainable damages.
The Ohio Revised Code, under Sections 723.49 – 723.50, allows a neighbor to excavate down to (i) nine feet below the curb or street grade and (ii) the full depth of the foundation wall of any building on the landowner’s land, without liability. That said, if a neighbor digs to a depth greater than nine feet below the curb of the street, and such digging causes damage to any of a landowner’s buildings, then the neighbor is liable regardless of whether the neighbor is negligent. However, the neighbor’s digging must be the proximate cause of the damage.
Under a negligence standard, a neighbor might also be liable when the neighbor’s digging causes damage to a landowner’s building. The landowner must demonstrate that the neighbor was negligent by showing that the neighbor’s digging (i) removed the lateral support to the landowner’s building, (ii) caused injury thereto, and (iii) caused ascertainable damages.
Note: Concerning negligence, a neighbor has a duty to perform work, even if on their land, in such a manner as not to damage an uphill landowner’s land.
When dealing with the possible removal or the removal of lateral support, a landowner may seek an injunction or sue for damages. A landowner may seek an injunction to ask the court to prevent a neighbor from taking actions that will remove the lateral support to the landowner’s land. Alternatively, a landowner may seek monetary damages after a neighbor damages the landowner’s land. Such damages are based on “the time required to repair and a comparison of the cost to repair to the diminution in the fair market value of the [landowner’s land] before and after the damage.”[1]
Note: If a landowner lives uphill from a neighbor, and the neighbor removes soil downhill from the landowner’s land resulting in damage to the landowner’s land, then the neighbor must make the repairs.
If (i) you own land on one of the seven hills of Cincinnati; (ii) your downhill neighbor started digging on their land; and (iii) such digging threatened to cause or caused your land to slide, then call the Finney Law Firm today, where an experienced professional can provide insight as to whether you have a claim for an injunction or damages.
[1] 1 Ohio Real Property Law and Practice § 8.07 (2021).
The business buzzword for 2022 is: Inflation.
The inflation rate in 2021 was 7.5%, a rate that the the Federal Reserve says took them completely by surprise. And 2022? Many prognosticators (this author included) believe inflation will hit double digits for the first time in more than 30 years. This comes after rates of inflation consistently at or below 2% for the past decade. As a result, many marketplace participants simply are not aware of strategies that will enable them to navigate the shoals of an inflationary environment.
This blog entry may pivot between references to rates of inflation and rates of interest for borrowing. These two concepts, while different, are addressed interchangeably as (a) inflation is a widely accepted indicator of an over-stimulated economy and (b) the predictable response to inflation is raising interest rates charged to banks by the Fed to dampen that economic activity. In turn, banks will then raise the rates charged to consumer and commercial borrowers. So, higher inflation inevitably begets higher interest rates. The Fed has forecasted both (i) the possibility of front-loaded rate increases, meaning sharp rises in the coming months (as opposed to sequential rate hikes being stretched out over months and years) and (ii) as many as seven rate hikes in 2022 alone. This means interest rates could rise by a full 2% or more from today’s rates before January of 2023. How high can rates go? In March of 1980 the prime rate of interest peaked at 19.5%. Imagine the impact of interest rate adjustments on your business model at those exorbitant rates.
Here are a few things to consider to protect yourself in inflationary times:
We saw with the rapid deterioration of the real estate market from 2006 to 2010 that buyers many times would willfully breach their contractual obligations to buy or rent. In this process, they would search for a contingency or loophole — any argument whatsoever — to evade their contractual promises. And in other instances, they would just outright walk away. Accompanying these contractual breaches were also insolvency and bankruptcy, making collection impractical or impossible. Similarly, as the real estate marketplace has heated up over the past five years, we have seen sellers work to evade their contractual obligations so they could retain an appreciating investment or simply realize a higher price from a second buyer.
How can you protect yourself in this type of dynamic market to assure performance by a buyer or seller?
As the economy becomes more unpredictable and more dynamic in terms of pricing, supply shortages and interest rates, market participants would be wise to carefully think about the impact of inflation and interest rate hikes on their contractual obligations and market positioning.
We all know of creative and incessant attempts to defraud us of our hard-earned money, many (but not all) internet- and email-based. But nonetheless (i) the efforts of snooker us never stop, and (ii) we must constantly tell others in our family and our organization to be wary. Eternal vigilance is a business and personal requisite these days. The criminals are absolutely relentless.
Just this last week, our firm and my family were “almost” taken in by two of these international criminals:
[Something to note about these fraudulent inquiries: (i) they never want to communicate via telephone (but rather by email), (ii) the phone number they provide is always bad, and (iii) they always have some bland *@Gmail address.” I sometimes respond to the email address they provide “please call me,” and they never do. I call the phone number and it is bad for one reason or another.]
Our firms, and our title company in particular, are attacked by fraudsters almost daily. Fortunately, we are alert to the most common scams, and have avoided them all (we have clients who have not been so lucky). But these two close calls — at the office and at home – remind us that vigilance is required and gullibility, and trust, in the internet era are simply foolish!
Be cautious with your funds and your property. There are loads of fraudsters — some anonymous on the internet and some that you think are your friends — who will gladly and shamelessly steal your money and leave you wondering why you fell for their scam!
Be cautious! Be aware! Trust very few.
[Editor’s note: We have many clients regularly buying, improving and holding commercial properties within the City limits of Cincinnati, but they are not availing themselves of the simple and valuable property tax abatements available. Please contact Eli Krafte-Jacobs (513.797.2853) on your next project to attain these generous and significant property tax savings on your City project!]
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The City of Cincinnati, Community Reinvestment Area Commercial Abatement Program provides incentives to build and/or renovate commercial, industrial or mixed-use facilities. These incentives are manifest as property tax abatements and allow the developer (or future owner/operator) to reduce the operating expenses associated with the property.
Commercial projects in the City of Cincinnati (you need to take care to understand the geographic City limits of Cincinnati) are eligible for a maximum net tax exemption of up to sixty-seven percent (67%) of the improvement value for up to fifteen years. In all cases, the developer must also enter into a separate agreement with the relevant school board to pay an amount equal to thirty-three percent (33%) of the improvement value as a Payment-in-Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to be eligible for the abatement program. This PILOT cost does not further reduce the potential maximum net tax exemption.
The application review process determines the abatement percentage and the number of years for which it will apply. As part of the application, the developer must submit a $1,250 fee and describe its own development experience, the specific project and why it deserves a tax exemption, any planned community engagement, and anticipated job creation/retention. Additionally, the developer must submit the following supplemental information:
In connection with the application, Developers can indicate whether they intend to enter into a Voluntary Tax Incentive Contribution Agreement (VTICA), which factors into determining the percentage and length of time of the abatement. Under a VTICA, the property owner agrees to pay a portion of the abated tax to the municipality for certain uses including, most prominently, the streetcar [applicable as to downtown projects]. City Council has instructed the Department of Community and Economic Development to consider VTICA contributions of fifteen percent (15%) or more of the abatement amount to be a substantial positive factor in reviewing applications.
Factors in Reviewing Application/Determining Level of Exemption:
For assistance with commercial or residential tax abatements (almost exclusively inside the City of Cincinnati), please contact Eli Krafte-Jacobs [513-797-2853]).
[1] These items are absolute requirements