MAHONING COUNTY Judge asks high court to dismiss complaint

Lawyers say the contempt hearing should have been allowed to go forward.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Lawyers for Mahoning County Probate Judge Timothy P. Maloney have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to dismiss a complaint filed against the judge last month by Prosecutor Paul Gains.
The complaint, which was upheld by the high court, prevented Judge Maloney from hauling county commissioners into his courtroom for a contempt of court hearing.
Attorneys John B. Juhasz and Mary Jane Stephens say the complaint was unfounded so should be thrown out.
Judge Maloney had ordered county commissioners to appear before him July 24 and explain why he should not hold them in contempt for failing to follow a previous court order.
He says commissioners and their budgetary staff improperly transferred money within the probate court accounts without his knowledge or permission. When he ordered them to restore the money they'd transferred, commissioners refused, resulting in the contempt citation.
Gains' complaint
Gains, representing commissioners, filed a complaint with the high court, arguing that the funding issue is actually part of a lawsuit Judge Maloney filed against commissioners earlier this year seeking to force them to give him more money to operate the court.
The high court ruled that the funding dispute will be resolved in the lawsuit, so blocked Judge Maloney from holding the contempt hearing and said it will decide all the issues at the same time.
In a 14-page appeal filed last week, Juhasz and Stephens said the issues should be kept separate and the contempt hearing should have been allowed.
The point of the contempt hearing was not to force commissioners to provide the probate court with more money, but to determine why commissioners did not follow Judge Maloney's court order, Juhasz said.
"Only the most unschooled could read that order as one to give the [probate] court money it ordered in December 2002," the court document says.
Judge ordered appropriation
Last year, Judge Maloney issued a court order for commissioners to appropriate $922,196 to the court for 2003. Commissioners budgeted the court only $750,000. That's when the judge sued, hoping to force commissioners to provide him with more money.
"[Commissioners'] simplistic legal argument that anything touching the 2003 budget falls under the umbrella of the pending mandamus action demonstrates either a lack of appreciation of the legal issues or a conscious desire to disregard them," the appeal says.
Juhasz and Stephens also said commissioners should not have been allowed to file the complaint because they had not exhausted other legal remedies at the lower court levels.
For example, had they gone to the hearing and been found in contempt of court, commissioners could have appealed to the Ohio 7th District Court of Appeals, the appeal says.
Gains had not seen the appeal, but said he can't understand why Juhasz and Stephens filed it.
"I don't know why they don't just wait and let the mandamus action settle this," Gains said. "That's what the Supreme Court said they should do, so that's what they should do."
bjackson@vindy.com