Tucker Ellis & West Secures Supreme Court Win for American Optical

January 2010

Cleveland, Ohio – (January 21, 2010) Tucker Ellis & West attorneys Jeffrey Healy and Susan Audey secured a win in the Ohio Supreme Court for defendant American Optical in Cross v. A-Best Products Company. With nothing more than the jurisdictional briefs before it, the Supreme Court, on the authority of its 2008 decision in Ackison v. Anchor Packing Company, reversed the judgment of the Eighth District Court of Appeals that had affirmed the trial court’s refusal to apply the new prima-facie-requirement statute enacted by the General Assembly as part of Am.Sub.H.B. No. 292.

Although the abbreviated procedural course taken in Cross is not typical, it is the right result for American Optical in particular and all defendants in asbestos litigation in general. The Court’s decision sends a clear signal that its decision in Ackison is the standard that trial courts are to rely upon when faced with whether pre-H.B. 292 cases are subject to the prima-facie-requirement statute.

Tucker Ellis & West LLP is a full service law firm with over 145 attorneys with offices in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, and Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. 

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