CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday sanctioned prominent Cleveland divorce attorney Joseph Stafford and two other lawyers at his firm after finding they “repeatedly engaged in frivolous conduct” that substantially delayed cases, an opinion said.
The court’s justices unanimously declared Stafford, Nicole Cruz and Kelley Tauring, all of the Stafford Law Co., to be vexatious litigators. The label now requires them to seek the justices’ approval before they can appeal anything other than a final judgment with the court.
The high court also ordered them to pay attorney fees to the opposing side’s counsel in the underlying divorce case.
Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy wrote in the court’s opinion that Stafford and attorneys working on his behalf had filed unsuccessful appeals in several cases after a judge denied his request to postpone a scheduled hearing. The court has held several times that the order is not appealable, but Stafford and the attorneys did not cite any case law in their filings, Kennedy wrote.
Each appeal halted the proceedings in the trial court, which resulted in an “unwarranted delay,” Kennedy wrote.
“Thus, we must be particularly vigilant in guarding against attorneys who file frivolous appeals that serve only to delay the administration of justice,” Kennedy wrote.
Stafford told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer on Wednesday that attorneys in his office are evaluating how to proceed with their client’s case.
“Our client’s appeal was challenging a trial court’s denial of a continuance so that our client could pursue cancer treatment,” Stafford wrote.
The decision came from a divorce case in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court. Stafford, Cruz and Tauring represented a woman living in Canada who divorced her husband, a doctor who lives in Cuyahoga County.
According to the opinion, a hearing was set for July 19 on a request to increase the amount of money the doctor owed his former wife. Stafford asked for the hearing to be continued, but he was denied.
The day of the hearing, Cruz and Tauring filed a notice of appeal with the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals, which stopped the trial court from holding any more hearings on the case until the appeal was settled. The appellate court declined to take up the appeal, and the attorneys then appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.
Kennedy wrote that it was the third time this year that Stafford or his firm filed such an appeal.
The lawyers’ filings did not discuss nearly a dozen prior rulings in which courts across Ohio have held that a judge’s denial of a request to postpone a hearing cannot be appealed, Kennedy wrote.
“The appeal brought by the Stafford counsel in this case is frivolous because it is neither warranted by existing law nor supported by a good-faith argument for the extension, modification or reversal of existing law,” the justice wrote.
Stafford also represents a woman in a divorce case that has been pending since 2017.
The Ohio Supreme Court in July declared the woman a vexatious litigator. The ruling was based on a series of appeals that Stafford and Cruz filed on her behalf after the high court in 2022 took the rare step of ordering the visiting judge, Reeve Kelsey, to rule on more than 75 motions that were pending and set the case for trial.
After the order, Stafford and Cruz appealed Kelsey’s scheduling of several hearings and his order removing a guardian ad litem. They filed a motion to disqualify him from hearing the case.
In that case, which also was unanimous, Kennedy wrote that “the appeals … brought here were not reasonably grounded in fact or law and appear to have been prosecuted simply for delay.”
Larry Zukerman was one of the attorneys for the husband in that case who sought to have Stafford’s client declared a vexatious litigator. His lawyers argued that Stafford and his firm were bringing the appeals to keep Kelsey from ruling on motions so the case could proceed to trial.
