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Panel to hear complaint against Warren appeals court candidate
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A probable-cause panel has certified a complaint to the Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Conduct alleging that Atty. Ron M. Tamburrino of Ashtabula County, a candidate for 11th District Court of Appeals, made false or possibly false statements about his opponent in his last run for a seat on the court.
The Warren-based court of appeals reviews common-pleas and municipal-court decisions from Trumbull, Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula and Portage counties.
Tamburrino, a Republican from Rock Creek, has been asked to file an answer to the allegations.
Tamburrino has been an attorney since 1983 and ran against Judge Timothy P. Cannon, a Democrat from Painesville, in 2014. Cannon won the election.
According to the complaint, Tamburrino ran a television advertisement during the 2014 campaign purporting that Judge Cannon “doesn’t think teenage drinking is serious” and cited an opinion Judge Cannon wrote in 2008 for the court.
In the opinion, Judge Cannon wrote he agreed with the majority in saying police didn’t have a right to enter a home to investigate possible underage drinking.
The complaint said the ad violated a rule of professional conduct barring him from disseminating information “knowing the information to be false or with reckless disregard of whether or not it was false.”
The complaint also alleges Tamburrino also alleged during the campaign that Cannon “won’t disclose his taxpayer-funded travel expenses,” when, in fact, Tamburrino “had never asked” for them.
The Board of Professional Conduct typically has a hearing within four to six months on the allegations, according to a news release from the Ohio Supreme Court.
If the board finds that a lawyer or judge has engaged in professional misconduct, the board will file a report with the Supreme Court that includes a recommended sanction. The Supreme Court is responsible for reviewing the case record and imposing discipline.
Tamburrino could not be reached to comment.
Meanwhile, a complaint also has been filed against Atty. Timothy E. Bellow of Glen Oaks Drive Northeast in Warren, who has practiced law since 1997. His last known business address was 214 N. State St., Girard. He already is suspended from practicing law because of a previous disciplinary case.
His new disciplinary matter stems from two cases. One began in October 2014 in which a client paid Bellow $300 plus a $245 filing fee to file a dissolution in Stark County, but he never filed it.
He also never returned the client’s phone calls, the complaint says, adding that Bellow engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”
The complaint says he also failed to handle a divorce for a Trumbull County couple beginning in May 2014 and accepted $450 but did not file the divorce. Bellow did not return the client’s calls, only responding one time through Facebook personal messaging, saying he had lost the paperwork, the complaint said.