Court of Appeals Ohio Tenth District

Court of Appeals Records, Ohio Tenth District

Searching for Court of Appeals Records in Ohio�s Tenth District

The Tenth Appellate District in the State of Ohio includes only one Ohio County, which is Franklin. Unless a case file has been sealed for some reason, files of cases before the Tenth District Court of Appeals are matters of public record and can be viewed by any interested member of the public.

The Tenth District Court of Appeals hears matters that are appealed from Franklin County�s Court of Common Pleas and Municipal Court. The file for each appellate case includes the entire file from the Municipal Court or Court of Common Pleas, as well as the records from the events that have taken place in the Court of Appeals pertaining to that file. Therefore, each appellate file will include all pleadings from the court below, as well as motions and responses and all entries, orders and decisions from the court. The file will also include the Notice of Appeal and related filings that caused the case to be taken before the Court of Appeals, as well as documents that may have been filed in the Court of Appeals such as actions taken by the Court, briefs filed by parties, and the Court�s opinion.

After a Notice of Appeal has been filed in a case, either in the Municipal Court or in the Court of Common Pleas, the entire physical file is transported to the Court of Appeals. In Franklin County, this is a simple matter, since the Franklin County Municipal Court, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, and Tenth District Court of Appeals, are located in adjoining buildings that share a lobby. After the physical file has been transported to the Tenth District Court of Appeals, you will no longer be able to view the physical court documents in the Clerks Office for the Court of Common Pleas or the Municipal Court (although microfiche copies of Common Pleas Court documents will still be available in the Clerk�s Office for the Court of Common Pleas). Therefore, after the file has been sent to the Court of Appeals, even documents that were filed in the courts below can only be physically accessed in the Clerk�s Office for the Court of Appeals.

To view a Court of Appeals file in person, the Clerk of Court�s office for the Tenth District Court of Appeals is located at 373 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio, on the twenty-third floor. From this location, you can request to view case files after providing the case number of the file you wish to view. It should be remembered that a case will not have the same case number in the Court of Appeals that it had in the Court of Common Pleas or the Municipal Court. To get the Court of Appeals case number in a case appealed from the Court of Appeals, you can search for the case online, going to www.franklincountyclerk.com . From this websites, you will be able to search for the appropriate case by name and then view the associated court docket to show the activity on the case before it was sent to the Court of Appeals. Along with the notation for the filing of a Notice of Appeal, the Court of Appeals case number for the case will be given. This is the number to provide to the employees in the Court of Appeals Clerk of Courts office in order for them to pull the appropriate file for you.

Unfortunately, the docket and records for Tenth District Court of Appeals cases is not yet available for viewing online. However, if an opinion has been rendered in a Tenth District Court of Appeals case, this opinion may be viewed online. To do so, visit the website http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/newpdf/ . From this page you can search for opinions from Ohio�s appellate courts. To search for a Tenth District Appellate decision, change the drop-down menu marked Source to Tenth District Court of Appeals. Then in the drop-down menu next to the word Decided, select the year in which the opinion was rendered. Finally, in the window marked �Full Text,� type the appellate case number or the name of one of the parties. There is a window for �WebCite No.,� but the case number should not be entered here; the online system has a separate catalog number, or �WebCite� number, for each case which is unrelated to the case number.

After your search information has been entered, click Submit. All of the matching cases will appear below in a list including the names of the cases which are also clickable links. The opinion for that case may be viewed by clicking on the link.