Ohio Primary Law Legal Research Guide: Cases

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• Lexis Advance
  Use the Filters (pulldown menu in the search box) to select Category = cases and Jurisdiction = Ohio. 

Note that, once you have done a search in Lexis Advance, you can narrow your results down to a certain court, for example, the 10th Dist. Court of Appeals.

Cases are considered reported if they are in the Ohio Official Reports.  See reported v. unreported cases, below, to see what this distinction means.

The Ohio Supreme Court designated the Supreme Court website as the Ohio Official Reports for opinions of the courts of appeals and the Court of Claims as of July 1, 2012.  See Rules for Reporting Opinions, Rule 3.2  . 

Before July 1, 2012, the Ohio Official Reports referred to official print publications of Ohio cases.  All Ohio Supreme Court decisions are included in these. The Reporter of Decisions selected certain appellate and municipal cases to publish in the Ohio Official Reports. See Rules for Reporting Opinions.  The most recent series of the Official Reports are:

Prior Series of Ohio Official Reports, in Reverse Chronological Order:

• Ohio State Reports 2d; Ohio Appellate Reports 2d; Ohio Miscellaneous Reports
• Ohio State Reports, Ohio Appellate Reports
• Ohio Reports

New Officially Reported Cases:

If a decision appears in an official reporter (Ohio Official Reporter or Ohio Reports), it is a "reported" decision. Generally, all Ohio Supreme Court decisions are "reported". The Reporter of Decisions decides which appellate and municipal cases appear in the Ohio Official Reports. See Rules for Reporting Opinions.

In the past, reported decisions were controlling authority in the district, and "unreported" opinions were merely "persuasive", meaning they are controlling only as to the parties. Prior versions of the Supreme Court Rules for Reporting opinions stated that unreported opinions "may be" cited in limited circumstances.

As of May 1, 2002, the Supreme Court abolished the distinction between "controlling" and "persuasive" opinions, based merely upon whether a case appears in the Official Reporter. Opinions for all cases decided on and after May 1, 2002 may be cited as legal authority and "weighted as deemed appropriate by the courts" See Rules for Reporting Opinions, Rule 3.4 .  The Supreme Court designated the Supreme Court website as the Ohio Official Reports for opinions of the courts of appeals and the Court of Claims as of July 1, 2012.  See Rules for Reporting Opinions, Rule 3.2  . 

(Some interpret this as all appellate opinions since May 1, 2002 are now controlling because all are published on the web and because the comments to Rules for Reporting Opinions, Rule 4 say "The Committee recognized the concern that with the designations abolished, and all appellate opinions are "controlling," there is some burden on the practitioner to sift through the large number of opinions to find those that are the best precedent". However, Rule 4 itself says "All court of appeals opinions issued after the effective date of these rules may be cited as legal authority and weighted as deemed appropriate by the courts."  In 2012, Rule 4 was amended and renumbered Rule 3.4, and also says "weighted as deemed appropriate by the courts."  )

Ohio Revised Code 2503.20 still states that, "All such cases shall be reported in accordance with this section before they are recognized by and receive the official sanction of any court."

Citation formats for Ohio

Federal Courts in Ohio

How-tos - Updating a case, finding a case on a certain subject, tracking pending Ohio Supreme Court cases.

Image is a map showing Ohio Appellate Districts.

An "Ohio case" can be one heard in the State Court System or the Federal Court System.

For an explanation of the hierarchy of the Ohio State Court System, look at the Structure of the Ohio Judicial System Chart.  To learn about the structure of the Federal Court System, check out the U.S. Courts page on the Structure of the U.S. Courts.

A video called Going to Court by the Ohio State Bar Association is helpful.

There are lots of unofficial reporters, many of which are no longer published.  A list of common Ohio case reporters and their abbreviations is below. You can type the name of the case reporter into Library World to find the call number of the print reporter.

One unofficial reporter that is still published currently is North Eastern Reporter, now in its second series, KF 135 .N62. The Franklin County Law Library no longer has a full run of this reporter in print, but it is available on Lexis in the computer labs. It includes Ohio Supreme Court and appellate decisions for Ohio and other northeast states.

For a list of unofficial reporters, see Ohio Case Law: Where to Find It by the Ohio Supreme Court Law Library. The following articles discuss some of these unofficial case reporters: Ervin H.Pollack and J. Russell Leach, Ohio's Reported Decisions -- An Integrated Survey , 11 Ohio State Law Journal 413 (1950) and Paul Richert, An Update on Judicial Reporting , 41 Ohio State Law Journal 675 (1980). Pdf versions of these articles are attached below.