INMATE’S LAWSUIT REACHES STATE’S TOP COURT
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Wednesday, November 15, 2000
NEWS 01C
By Alan Johnson
Lonny Lee Bristow was silent, but his painful words echoed yesterday as the Ohio Supreme Court heard an appeal from the poster child for Ohio’s ‘vexatious-litigator’ law. In Bristow’s hands, attorney Mark Landes said, lawsuits have been “used, abused and thrust into the hearts and souls of over a hundred victims.” Landes’ Columbus law firm has been fighting a legal war against Bristow since 1993 on behalf of officials in Bristow’s home county of Richland. Outside the Supreme Court chambers, some of Bristow’s victims huddled to discuss the case. Darlene Windsor -- Bristow’s aunt and target of lawsuits filed in 55 Ohio counties and the Nevada Supreme Court -- bemoaned the pain her nephew has caused. “He can do so much damage with a pen and a piece of paper, a telephone and a computer,” she said. Bristow, 27, a Mansfield man incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown, has filed at least 137 lawsuits in Ohio and other states. The state’s most prolific jailhouse lawyer, Bristow became the focus of Ohio’s 1997 law aimed at curbing costly and abusive suits. His lawsuits have cost Ohio taxpayers an estimated $100,000. After his mail and court privileges were restricted, Bristow, not surprisingly, went to court. His appeal ended up in the Supreme Court after the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Crawford County struck down the vexatious-litigator law. Bristow did not appear in court yesterday, although he could have because he acts as his own attorney. Instead, he filed a neat, hand-printed brief claiming that the restrictions on his mail and lawsuit-writing privileges violate his constitutional rights to freedom of speech, privacy, due process and access to the courts. The oral arguments yesterday and Bristow’s brief will be considered by the court in rendering a decision, probably early next year. Justices Deborah Cook and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton excused themselves from hearing Bristow’s case because both were on a committee that drafted the vexatious-litigator law. They were replaced by two appeals court judges. Judith French, a lawyer representing Attorney General Betty D. Montgomery, told justices that the restrictions do not amount to “locking the door to the courtroom.” Bristow could still file nonfrivolous lawsuits, with court permission, or hire a lawyer to do it, or seek relief in the federal courts, she said. Bristow was sentenced in June 1998 to nine years, 11 months in prison by Crawford County Judge Nelfred G. Kimerline for his conviction on 14 counts of telephone harassment of his aunt and Richland County public officials, including the sheriff and judges. Earlier this year, Judge Walter C. Lytten of Scioto County Common Pleas Court tacked on three years and three months to Bristow’s sentence after he masterminded the most elaborate phone scam uncovered in an Ohio prison, stealing a Dublin man’s identity and racking up thousands of dollars in credit-card and phone bills. In September, after he was moved to the “supermax” prison at Youngstown -- where inmates are locked down 23 hours a day -- Bristow somehow managed to file suits in three different counties. Bristow’s lawsuits often are filled with profanity, violent threats and obscene sexual accusations. They usually are aimed at judges, law-enforcement personnel and public officials. Although frivolous, the suits clog the court system because lawyers must respond on behalf of named public officials and law-enforcement employees.
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