CINCINNATI — The Ohio Supreme Court rewrote the rules for libel lawsuits Thursday, allowing Sycamore Township Trustee Tom Weidman to renew a defamation claim against real estate developer Christopher Hildebrant.
In a 5-2 opinion, the court ruled Ohio’s one-year statute of limitations on libel cases can be flexible when “the publication of the libelous statements was secretive or concealed.”
A dissenting opinion accused the majority of “judicial activism," but the ruling means Weidman can pursue a Warren County lawsuit against Hildebrant.
“I’m grateful to the Ohio Supreme Court,” Weidman said. “I plan to force Hildebrant to face a Warren County jury. This fight has just begun.”
Hildebrant's attorney, Chad Ziepfel, said he was disappointed but looks forward to presenting Hildebrant's case.
"Mr. Hildebrant will have an opportunity to offer evidence that 13 years ago, Mr. Weidman and another individual solicited bribes in connection with a planned real estate development project that never materialized," Ziepfel said, "and that Mr. Hildebrant created the allegedly defamatory email that lies at the center of this case, in what turned out to be a successful attempt to avoid paying a bribe to either of them."
The case flowed from a controversy that erupted in 2021, when Hildebrant accused Weidman of soliciting bribes for proposed Kenwood land deals from 2009 to 2011.
Hildebrant offered an email as evidence of the alleged bribes, but later admitted he wrote the email to himself before showing it to a colleague in December 2011.
When Hildebrant showed it to Sycamore Township officials in early 2020, they requested a state investigation. Weidman learned about the fake email from state investigators.
A Warren County judge dismissed Weidman’s defamation claim, saying it should have been filed within one year of the email’s first use in 2011. The 12th District Court of Appeals disagreed.
“Given the secretive manner in which Hildebrant went about publishing the defamatory remarks, Weidman could not have known about the libelous conduct and the injury resulting therefrom until November 18, 2020 — the date he met with investigators from the Auditor's Office,” said the May 2022 ruling.
The Ohio Supreme Court took it one step further, with a ruling that was criticized by Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy.
“The majority takes the judicially created ‘discovery rule,’ which has been narrowly applied in bodily-injury, medical-malpractice, and actual-economic-loss cases, and expands its application to defamation cases,” Kennedy wrote. “By holding that the date of publication does not control when a defamation cause of action accrues, the majority’s decision ‘thrust[s] the judiciary into the role of law maker.’”
Writing for the majority, Justice Michael Donnelly rejected Kennedy’s criticism.
“Statutes of limitations are enacted to ensure fairness to defendants, encourage prompt prosecution of causes of action, suppress stale claims, and avoid difficulties of proof because of lost or eroded evidence. Applying the discovery rule to cases such as the one before us offends none of these goals,” Donnelly wrote. “Rather, it reflects the understanding that a tortfeasor should not be permitted to secretively injure a person and avoid liability for that injury by hiding behind a statute of limitations.”
