In a decision announced today, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that when a property has been the subject of two arm’s length sales between a willing buyer and seller within a reasonable length of time before or after the tax-lien date, the sale occurring closer in time to the tax lien date establishes the true value of the property for taxation purposes.

The Supreme Court of Ohio today imposed an indefinite suspension against the law license of Akron attorney Michelle A. Smithern for misappropriating more than $100,000 from her law firm by depositing retainer fees she received from 32 clients into her own personal bank account rather than the firm’s accounts. Smithern has been under an interim license suspension since February 2009, when the Court was notified of her conviction on a felony theft charge.

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that a hearing-impaired jury candidate should have been dismissed for cause in an Ottawa County murder case in which the court knew that evidence from an audio tape recording would be introduced as purported proof of the defendant’s guilt.

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Garrity v. New Jersey and Kastigar v. United States, when a public employer compels an employee under threat of firing to make a statement in an administrative proceeding: the state may not make any direct or derivative use of the employee’s statement in a criminal proceeding against the employee; the state makes derivative use of the employee’s statement when it presents to a grand jury testimony from a witness to the statement and when the prosecutor reviews the employee’s statement in preparation for trial; and when the state fails to prove that it did not make any use of the employee’s statement in obtaining an indictment, the indictment must be dismissed.

The Supreme Court of Ohio today imposed a $20,000 civil penalty against Kimberly A. Dalton of Cincinnati and Precision Land Title Agency for engaging in the unauthorized practice of law, and issued an injunction ordering them to desist from all future actions that constitute unauthorized law practice.