The Ohio Supreme Court issued its mandate in Brandt v. Pompa, striking the state's personal-injury damage cap in a case involving the repeated rape of a minor. The 4-3 decision, issued December 16 after argument by CCL President Robert S. Peck, held that the statutory exception to the cap, for permanent and catastrophic physical injuries, denied due process to the plaintiffs who had permanent and catastrophic psychological injuries, a distinction in the legislation that had no rational basis. 

       The defendant, however, filed a motion for reconsideration on December 27, along with a request that all four justices in the majority recuse themselves. The reconsideration motion largely reargued his losing case, but also emphasized a complaint from one of the dissenting justices -- that the majority had rushed him to complete his dissent in order to issue the decision and allow reconsideration to be determined this year, while the same justices who heard the case were intact. Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who wrote the decision, reached mandatory retirement age this year, so that she must step down on December 31. The alleged departure from internal operating procedures in forcing the dissenter to issue his opinion served as the basis of the recusal request.

      The justices refused to recuse and, after CCL's Peck wrote a memorandum in opposition to reconsideration one day after the motion was filed, which urged summary denial, the Court did just that and issued a one-sentence denial of reconsideration. With that order, the case is now at its end.