Tuesday of this week Finney Law Firm attorneys Isaac T. Heintz and W. Z. “Dylan” Sizemore present “5 Pillars of Success” for the Anderson Chamber of Commerce.
The course addresses the foundations of business success through carefully establishing and planning the success of your business with legal strategies in corporate law, real estate law and estate planning.
A video of the course will soon be available on line.
For those readers following the Indian Hill School District class action litigation (read here for more), yesterday, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Martin approved the global settlement. This is good news for all involved, as a six-year legal battle has now wound to a successful end.
Today’s Cincinnati Enquirer has an update here.
We will run a blog entry next week with specific instructions on how those who now or during the class action period did own property in Indian Hill can obtain refunds. The average refund will be around $800.
When drafting leases, contracts and other agreements, frequently my client informs me that a key provision has been negotiated or an impasse has been resolved by making an agreement to negotiate an agreement later.
For example, the question the parties have is: “what is to be the lease rate upon a renewal in five years?” Or, “what will be the location of a utility easement across land of the seller to serve new property being acquired by the buyer?” And the answer the parties provide is: “will be negotiated at that time” or “we will decide at a later date.”
These answers are, of course, not answers at all. And they constitute no agreement at all, for what if the parties fail to agree?
In the lease scenario, five years goes by, and the tenant exercises a renewal option subject to a “will negotiate the rental rate later” provision. Then, the parties negotiate and cannot come up with an agreement. Is the renewal effective? If so, at what rate? If the parties don’t set some sort of procedure (e.g., an appraiser will decide the rate) or some sort of benchmark (e.g., applying CPI inflation rate since the signing off the lease). The “agree to something later” formulation is the recipe for conflict if not disaster.
In the easement scenario, the seller agrees to provide water, sanitary sewer and electricity easements after the closing on the property being sold, at a location to be decided between the parties. But what if the seller offers access only at a location costly and inconvenient to the buyer? What if the buyer demands access in a location that makes the remainder of seller’s property undevelopable? Again, without some procedure (a neutral third party will arbitrate disputes) or benchmark (as close to the east property line as practical), the agreement to provide agreed utility easements at a later date is a hallow promise and an illusory contract.
Now, if the parties trust one another, have a history of getting along, or have economic motivations to cooperate, it may make sense for parties to an agreement to “agree to agree later,” but don’t labor under the illusion that the agreement reached is in itself meaningful, binding or clear.
Christopher P. Finney has been pleased to serve as one of three attorneys in the case of Fred Sanborn et al v. The Board of Education of the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District, et al.. This case is featured in a thorough analysis in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer.
As the story relates, the case is in part about the tremendous persistence of an 87-year old lead Plaintiff, Fred Sanborn, who doggedly researched and pursued the reversal of an illegal tax exacted by the Indian Hill School District and in part about the creative legal skills of Maurice Thompson and the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law.
The Finney Law Firm entered the case after the Ohio Supreme Court victory was secured, in a second action that ended up before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Martin to certify the class of taxpayers deserving a refund and to process the refund of the illegal-collected monies from the School District. Paul DeMarco of Markovitz, Stock and DeMarco provided invaluable assistance in the class action proceeding as well.
The initial question before the Ohio Supreme Court addressed a statute that allows a school district to raise additional revenue without a vote of the people in limited circumstances there the revenue was “clearly required.” Cynically, the Indian Hill School Board in 2009 attempted to effectuate the tax hike even though they held a $24 million surplus at the time. Thompson and the 1851 Center argued that either the words in the statute have meaning in restraining the discretion of the School Board, or they do not. The Supreme Court decided that the statute had real teeth and determined that the School Board’s enactment of the tax was illegal.
The victory will result in a handsome tax refund for current and former property owners in the Indian Hill School District, but also stands as important precedent that clips the wings of Ohio School Boards seeking an un-voted tax increase that is not “clearly required.” Boards of Education in Ohio are no longer able to ignore the clear language of the statute narrowly limiting the discretion to enact such a tax.
Additionally, Thompson had the prescience six years ago to concurrently commence a second action in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to certify a class for purposes of fulfilling complex statutory requirements that would secure taxpayer rights to a refund upon the completion of the Supreme Court proceeding. This was required because Ohio law is fairly hostile to taxpayers seeking retroactive refund of taxes, even those that clearly are illegal. These dual suits show the incredibly sophisticated legal battlefield, filled with landmines, that Plaintiffs faced.
This saga is really an heroic tale of both dogged citizen activism and enormous legal talent, mostly by Thompson and 1851. We are proud to have played a small part in this important victory for taxpayers.
2015 was our second year at the Finney Law Firm, and what a year it was!
Last year — our first year — we largely put the basics of our team in place. This year was the year to deepen our bench and to drive home even better results for clients. We delivered on that challenge:
Thank you — as an employee, as a client, as a vendor — for your continued support for this undertaking. It has been enormously rewarding for each of us to be a part of it.
Ivy Pointe Title, LLC is a rapidly-growing residential and commercial title insurance company primarily serving Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana that presently seeks a marketing director who will design, implement and lead marketing efforts to residential and commercial lenders, residential and commercial Realtors, and investors, including:
Ivy Pointe Title, LLC is run by President Richard Turner, an attorney with 17 years of experience, and is closely affiliated with Finney Law Firm, LLC. We currently have offices in both Eastgate and Mt. Adams.
Our firm is committed to meeting the demanding requirements of the real estate. lending and title industries, using the latest technology, and tightly conforming with demanding legal constraints upon the industry. Additions to our team must share our commitment to quality, timely service delivery, transparent communications with transaction participants, and aggressive use of cutting-edge technology to achieve these ends.
The salary for the position will be competitive and will accompanied by a generous performance-based bonus structure. Our firm offers excellent benefits, including a 401K program.
Requirements to be considered to join our team are:
Interested applicants may submit their resume to Anna Ausman at Anna@FinneyLawFirm.Com. Applicants are advised to review our title company and law firm web sites to become familiar with the services we offer and the quality we deliver.
As previously reported in this blog, this firm has been honored to be selected as counsel to a group of Registered Land property owners to save that land registration system in Hamilton County, Ohio.
In the fall of 2014, the Hamilton County Commission voted 2-1 to abolish the Torrens land registration system. Hamilton County has enjoyed the highest rate of land registration in the State. Our clients then filed suit to block the abolition, in part based upon significant procedural errors on the part of the Hamilton County Commission in that abolition action.
During the pendency of that lawsuit, we successfully sought and obtained an injunction against the abolition of the system, requiring the Hamilton County Recorder to continue both “regular” land recording and the Torrens indexing.
In late October Judge Charles Kubicki dismissed the lawsuit, and then our plaintiff clients sought a “stay” of that decision — and a continuation of the Torrens land registration system pending appeal — first from Judge Kubicki and then from the 1st District Court of Appeals. Both of those motions were denied.
Thus, at present, the Hamilton County Recorder has ceased some aspects of Torrens Land Registration. We will report more fully in an update which procedures remain.
However, our appeal remains pending, and we have filed a motion with the Court of Appeals to expedite the disposition of the appeal, as the difficulty in restoring the Registered Land System may be compounded as time passes and hundreds if not thousands of documents require corrective indexing.
We’ll keep our blog readers advised as the appeal progresses.
The City of Portsmouth Ohio in 2014 enacted an ordinance requiring an inspection of real property before an owner could rent the same to a tenant. The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and the Finney Law Firm challenged that ordinance as being an unconstitutional warrantless search of real property violative of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Today, Judge Susan J. Dlott agreed, issuing this 17-page Order Granting Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Motion for Summary Judgment and Granting in Part and Denying in Part Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment. You may read that here.
This is a major victory for our clients, for private property rights, for our firm and for the 1851 Center.
We have been working on this for a while, but the Finney Law Firm’s latest expansion (our fourth!) is very close to becoming a reality. The lease is signed and the furniture has been delivered. We now only need phone and computer lines and signage, and we are in business!
We are expanding into the urban core of the City of Cincinnati in a new and exciting location to better serve our clients. We are keeping our office in Eastgate.
We will announce more soon!