The Ohio Supreme Court rejected arguments from Youngstown that a longstanding promotional dispute with police Detective Sgt. Michael R. Cox be dropped.

It’s the second time the state’s highest court has ruled on Cox’s issue.

Despite the latest ruling, city Law Director Jeff Limbian said Youngstown “is pleased that the Ohio Supreme Court is strongly limiting the options of Detective Sgt. Cox.”

Cox has opposed the city’s decision to not promote him to lieutenant for more than four years.

Cox objects to how the city civil service commission ranked applicants for that position. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown promoted William Ward to lieutenant May 20, 2019, based on scores on a written test given almost a year earlier.

CASE HISTORY

Cox brought a case about the mayor’s decision all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. The court in an Aug. 18, 2021, ruled Cox “did not file a timely appeal” opposing the civil service commission’s decision.

In that case, the court stated Cox had 30 days from July 17, 2019 — the day the commission approved the minutes from its June 19, 2019, meeting in which it determined Cox’s case was concluded — to appeal to the common pleas court. He failed to do so in those 30 days, the court ruled in dismissing the case.

In that 2021 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court addressed state law on Cox’s complaint that the commission didn’t provide “a final and appealable order” to him about the decision. But the Supreme Court left the local law question about that order to the common pleas court to review.

Cox filed with the commission a “motion for entry of final appealable order and motion for reconsideration” on May 14, 2020. The commission told Cox at its June 17, 2020, meeting it would take no further action, and Cox filed a case on July 17, 2020, in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Judge Maureen Sweeney determined May 16, 2022, that the commission “violated its own rule” by not issuing that “final and appealable order” and ordered the commission to do so in compliance with its own rules. The 7th District Court of Appeals agreed with Sweeney after the city appealed.

The city then filed an appeal June 28, 2022, with the Ohio Supreme Court to close out the Cox case, contending the commission’s June 17, 2020, decision was a final order and Sweeney didn’t have jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court disagreed with the city’s argument regarding the civil service commission’s 2020 ruling and ordered the matter referred back to Sweeney. But the court told the judge she didn’t have jurisdiction over Cox’s 2019 administrative appeal because that had already been decided.

“Judge Sweeney misreads our decision in” the first Cox case, the court wrote. “We rejected the theory that the commission’s failure to comply with (its rules) affected the timeliness of Cox’s appeal from the commission’s 2019 final order.”

In its latest ruling, the Supreme Court wrote Cox’s appeal of the June 17, 2020, commission decision was “a timely appeal.”

RESOLUTION

Limbian said he sees the decision as a way to resolve the matter as Sweeney previously ordered the city commission to notify Cox of its final decision. That will be done, and the matter is expected to be resolved, he said.

“This officer has tried, in a multi-prong approach, to undo the fact that he was not the highest scoring candidate on a civil service exam,” Limbian said. “This opinion represents the fact that the Supreme Court has closed another one of the doors to Detective Sgt. Cox’s fanciful arguments.”

Limbian added: “Hopefully, Detective Sgt. Cox will see that he was not entitled to this promotion and that if he wants to be promoted, he has to do better on the next exam.”

Cox and other detective sergeants took a lieutenant promotional test in June 2018. During the test, Cox objected that portions of it were based on an outdated examination book.

The commission certified the results of the test on Aug. 15, 2018, with Ward at the top of the list and Cox finishing third, two points behind Ward. Had four questions on the test been properly scored instead of each person getting credit for all of them, Cox would have tied for first and based on time of service he would have been No. 1 on the test, S. David Worhatch, his attorney, has argued.

The Supreme Court noted in its latest decision that the legal filings by Sweeney — which were made by the county prosecutor’s office on her behalf — and the city focused most of their attention on the 2019 decision “when we already held in (the previous case) that any appeal from that decision is time-barred.”

But the Supreme Court’s decision states that Cox’s second appeal, filed in 2020, shows “Judge Sweeney does not patently and unambiguously lack jurisdiction. Any error that may arise from Judge Sweeney’s treatment of Cox’s appeal as being from the commission’s July 2019 decision would be an error in the exercise of jurisdiction for which Youngstown has an adequate remedy by way of appeal.”

Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova said her office represents the county’s courts and judges in matters of judicial jurisdiction.

“The court ruled Judge Sweeney had proper jurisdiction, and it will go back to her docket and she’ll preside over the case,” DeGenova said.

dskolnick@vindy.com