Court puts clamps on bogus lawsuits

Saturday, December 30, 2000

Catherine Candisky
Dispatch Statehouse Reporter

Lonny Lee Bristow will need a new prison hobby.

In a 5-2 decision yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Ohio’s vexatious-litigator law, effectively putting Bristow’s lawsuit-filing days behind him.

The 1997 statute aims to restrict illegitimate, costly and often harassing lawsuits. Persistent filers deemed to be vexatious litigators still can initiate nonfrivolous lawsuits with court permission.

Bristow, a Mansfield man serving 13 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary at Youngstown, had filed about 135 lawsuits when the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Nov. 14. Since then, he has filed 17 more.

He has sued family and acquaintances, law-enforcement officers and their families and a Dispatch reporter.

In a 27-page ruling, Justice Alice Robie Resnick wrote that “Bristow attempts to make a mockery of the judicial system...

Although he knows he will never win a judgment, he gets revenge each time the defendants pay their attorney fees and court costs. For the cost of a stamp, Bristow has found a way to inflict his revenge on the defendants and the general taxpaying public. The only effective and fair way to curb his abuse is to take away the procedural privilege he has twisted into a weapon.”

The court, however, found that the Crawford County Common Pleas Court overstepped its authority by ordering that Bristow’s outgoing mail be routed through a judge for review. The order was requested by Richland County Prosecutor James J. Mayer Jr. to ensure the ban wasn’t being violated.

“While we sympathize with Mayer and the trial court under these exceedingly difficult circumstances, we find no authority to support this order, as it exceeds the scope of the court’s inherent powers,” Resnick wrote.

Under Ohio’s law, the Supreme Court notifies local courts of the names of anyone dubbed a vexatious litigator, leaving it to court officials to weed out any invalid lawsuits.

After his mail and court privileges were restricted, Bristow filed the lawsuit that led to yesterday’s ruling. The 3^rd District Court of Appeals in Crawford County had deemed the law unconstitutional. Supreme Court review was prompted by two other appellate courts upholding the statute.

Columbus attorney Mark Landes, who has fought Bristow on behalf of Richland County officials, said Bristow has harassed more than 100 people with groundless lawsuits.

In a suit filed against the daughter of a detective, Bristow alleged in lurid detail that the girl had been sexually molested by her father.

Bristow, 27, was sentenced in 1998 to nine years for telephone harassment of his aunt. Earlier this year he received an additional three years for a behind-bars scam to steal a Dublin man’s identity and rack up thousands of dollars in credit-card and phone bills.

He has filed the suits acting as his own attorney, and many are filled with obscenities, threats and wild accusations.

Although the suits are frivolous, defendants still must respond. Officials estimate the suits also have cost taxpayers about $100,000 in court and legal expenses.

While pleased with the court’s decision to uphold the law’s constitutionality, Landes said enforcement will be tough without the ability to review Bristow’s outgoing mail. After being banned from filing in Ohio courts, Landes noted, Bristow began filing lawsuits in out-of-state courts including Arizona and California.

“The (lower) court was just trying to plug a leak that had let him continue filing lawsuits,” Landes said. “The ruling creates a practical problem for a very persistent guy.”

Justice Paul E. Pfeifer and Judge Peter B. Abele of the 4^th District Court of Appeals, who sat on the case for recused Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, dissented.

“I am concerned that a valid complaint may not receive the attention it deserves simply because it was filed by a vexatious litigator,” Pfeifer wrote in a two-paragraph dissent. “Our courts are open to all who have been injured whether or not they have frivolously cried ‘Wolf’ too many times in the past.”