YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals for the third time denied the request of Taron Cunningham, who disputes his March 2019 removal as the city’s Community Development Agency director, to seek reinstatement with back pay.

In a two-page judgment entry, the court again dismissed the claim because Cunningham has another opportunity to fight for his job in front of the city’s Civil Service Commission. A commission hearing is scheduled to start next Monday and can last as long as three days.

“A party may seek … relief only from a final judgment,” the court ruled. That final judgment can come only after the city commission makes a decision on Cunningham’s appeal.

The court wrote in a Tuesday decision that a lawsuit in front of its judges “cannot be utilized to turn an otherwise unappealable order into an appealable one.”

The court had rejected Cunningham’s appeal on June 22, 2020, and an application for reconsideration on Feb. 17.

In turning down the appeal for a third time, the court wrote the motion from S. David Worhatch, Cunningham’s attorney, “was fundamentally a motion for reconsideration in which counsel for appellant repeated his arguments.”

City Law Director Jeff Limbian said: “The court of appeals was courteous but concise in its ruling in that this litigant had it explained three times now and that issue is resolved. We’re moving forward with the civil service hearing redo, and I’m expecting a positive outcome from that.”

Limbian also said: “I hope Mr. Cunningham recognizes that he should seek employment elsewhere.”

OPTIONS

Worhatch said Cunningham “will be assessing his options in going forward. He has 45 days, for example, marked by date of (Tuesday’s) decision to decide whether to ask the (Ohio) Supreme Court to review that decision and he has not make a determination along those lines in the scant 24 hours since receiving the appellate court’s decision.”

This appeal was about Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony D’Apolito’s Feb. 26, 2020, decision that didn’t address Cunningham’s request for back pay to a job that paid $74,997 annually. D’Apolito denied Cunningham’s motion in May to amend his previous ruling.

In that decision, D’Apolito ruled the commission was wrong to uphold Mayor Jamael Tito Brown’s March 8, 2019, firing of Cunningham because the mayor’s letter didn’t “include the reasons for termination” as required.

Brown wrote a new letter March 12, 2020, to Cunningham firing him, retroactive to March 8, 2019, with details from a Jan. 8, 2019, letter from T. Sharon Woodberry, Cunningham’s boss at the time, to Limbian.

Those letters outlined 26 issues with Cunningham including his “inability to adhere to policy and rules that govern the workplace, incompetence, poor communication skills, misrepresentation of facts in his course of work, general insubordination, temperamental and retaliatory behavior.”

Cunningham had appealed Brown’s initial termination to the commission, which upheld the mayor’s decision after a May 9, 2019, hearing and again on July 1, 2019. It issued a final order on July 22, 2019.

If the commission again rules against Cunningham, he could file an appeal with the common pleas court.

dskolnick@vindy.com