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Litigation tactics and abuse of the courts

Three years and seven dockets, in one continuous line. Everything an Ohio court would eventually call vexatious was visible on the divorce docket first.

24 August 2020 · 2 August 2023

From the divorce filing to the court declaring William Easton Horner to be a vexatious litigator

Read downward. Each entry is a public docket record of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. The marked entries are the turns.

  1. 24 August 2020

    She files for divorce

    Filed with the complaint is her sworn affidavit. In it she states that he had for several months been “using and/or abusing alcohol and non-prescription marijuana on a daily basis,” that his behavior under the influence was “unstable, irrational, threatening, harassing,” and that his mental health had deteriorated.

    These are her allegations, not findings. No court ruled on them. The divorce was granted on the ground of incompatibility. They are reproduced here because they are what she put before the court on day one, and because the court’s later orders — the mental-health conditions on his contact with the children — are only legible against them.

    The parenting proceeding affidavit filed with the complaint is not reproduced.

  2. 9 October 2020

    He pleads that the children are his

    In his own Answer and Counterclaim, signed by his attorney, he states there are “two (2) children born as issue of said marriage,” names them, gives their dates of birth, and asks the court to allocate parental rights over them and to award him child support.

    Six months later he asks for paternity testing on both children.

  3. 13 January 2021

    His own lawyer withdraws, citing the rule for a client who insists on something repugnant

    Attorney Stephen E.S. Daray moved to withdraw as counsel of record, stating that “Counsel for Defendant must withdraw pursuant to Rule 1.16(b)(4) of the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct.” The underlining is his.

    Rule 1.16(b)(4) permits a lawyer to withdraw where “the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.”

    What his client was insisting on is not in the record. A lawyer in that position is ordinarily bound to keep it confidential, and the rule’s own commentary says so. What is on the record is which door he chose to leave by.

    From this point Horner represents himself in every filing that follows. Counsel served him at 2551 Indian Trail, Morristown, Tennessee — his parents’ house — nine days before they moved to intervene.

    Motion to Withdraw as Counsel of Record, 13 January 2021, No. DR-20-382383 · Ohio Prof.Cond.R. 1.16(b)(4)

  4. 22 January 2021

    His parents move to intervene

    William Dean Horner and Kathy Hogarth Horner file to join the divorce and seek court-ordered visitation with their two grandchildren. Their filing gives their son’s address as their own house in Morristown, Tennessee.

    Motion No. 438024 · Their filings are set out in full on His parents.

  5. 23 February – 15 March 2021

    Eight motions in three weeks — five of them asking the court to hold his wife in contempt

    Filed pro se: a demand for an update on the restraining order, a demand for a date of completion on ordered items, a request that she show cause, and five separate motions to hold her in contempt — four of them on a single day, 15 March.

    On 31 March the court cleared the pile in one judgment entry. Six of his motions were denied outright. The restraining-order motion was denied as “an improper discovery request”; the date-of-completion motion and two contempt motions were denied as “not properly before the Court at this time”; and two more contempt motions — alleging she had altered life insurance information — were denied because “no evidence of alteration was presented to the Court.”

    One survived: on the fifth contempt motion, about the parties’ joint cell phone plan, his wife was given fourteen days to respond. In the same entry her motion for a support hearing was granted, and his parents’ motion to intervene was held in abeyance.

    Motions 438771, 438841, 439005, 439323, 439324, 439325 and 439326 · Judgment Entry, 31 March 2021, Docket ID 116567253

  6. 19 – 24 March 2021

    William Easton Horner files his own hospital record into the public docket

    Seven months after the detention he set out to prove it had been unlawful. On 19 March he made a public records request to the Westlake police, who sent him the call log the same morning. At the Probate Court he was told in person that the case had been “expunged” and that “all records, including the Order, were destroyed as part of that process.”

    Four days later he moved to subpoena the order and his wife’s affidavit, and attached six exhibits: his own sworn affidavit; the Westlake emails; the police call-for-service report; the department’s crisis-intervention general order; a state pamphlet on involuntary commitment; and — as Exhibit E — his own Patient Visit Report from St. Vincent Charity. It names his diagnosis, his medication and his admitting psychiatrist. Nobody released it; he filed it himself, into a public court file, to make a point. The next day he moved to strike the same order from evidence. Twenty months later he sued the hospital for releasing his medical records without authorization.

    The two things he read as tampering are both provided for on the face of the record. The order was addressed to the North Olmsted police “and/or any other police officer” — Westlake executed it because that is where his appointment was, and their log shows him “being cooperative” and turned over to hospital staff thirty-five minutes later. And the file was gone because R.C. 5122.141 requires it: a temporary detention that does not end in a court order ends in discharge and the expungement of “all record of the proceedings.” Five months later he told the Supreme Court of Ohio the order was “at best improperly executed and at worst an outright forgery.”

    Motion for Subpoena of Probate Order and Plaintiff Affidavit, filed 23 March 2021, and Motion to Strike Probate Order from Evidence, filed 24 March 2021 · No. DR-20-382383 · the detention order is Probate Court case 2020MI22049 · the medical record number and account number are reduced to their last four digits here. Two of the six exhibits — the police department’s general order and the state pamphlet, neither of them about him — are not reproduced.

  7. April 2021

    Paternity, raised in the document about money

    In a letter accompanying the financial affidavit the court had ordered him to file, he asks for paternity testing on both children before he will accept financial responsibility for them, and says he will make “formal pleas” to the judge for it.

    Six months earlier he had pleaded the opposite. In his Answer and Counterclaim of 9 October 2020, signed by his attorney, he stated there were “two (2) children born as issue of said marriage,” named them, and asked the court to award him child support for them.

    His letter is not among the filings retrieved. What is on the record is the magistrate’s account of it, six weeks later, and her finding that no motion for paternity testing was ever filed.

  8. 1 June 2021

    The magistrate closes it: nothing was ever filed

    “No formal motion for paternity testing has been filed with the Court as of the date of this order,” and he “is presumed to be the natural father of the children by reason of the parties’ marriage.”

    He never files one. No motion for paternity or genetic testing appears anywhere on the docket, at any point in the case.

  9. 9 July 2021

    He reports the judge to the FBI

    William Easton Horner submits a complaint to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center naming the judge hearing his divorce and the court’s director of family evaluation services, then files a copy of it into the divorce docket.

    The complaint form itself was filed a month later, as part of his “rejection of the trial order” — the document below, at its later pages.

  10. 9 August 2021

    He captions a filing “in civil disobedience”

    The document is titled, by him, “Defendant’s Rejection of the Trial Order Submitted in Civil Disobedience.” It is a refusal to comply with a court order, filed with the court that made it.

  11. 23 August 2021

    He reports two judges to the Supreme Court of Ohio

    A disciplinary grievance against two Probate Court judges, alleging the order under which he had been committed was “at best improperly executed and at worst an outright forgery” showing “obvious tampering.” He lists seven claimed signs of it. He files a copy into the divorce docket.

    He had gathered the material for it five months earlier, in the motion to subpoena the order. Two of the seven signs he lists are answered by the documents themselves: the order names one police force but says “and/or any other police officer,” and the destruction of the file is what R.C. 5122.141 directs when a temporary detention does not end in a court order.

    Disciplinary Counsel dismissed both grievances on 4 November 2021, writing in each that there was “no substantial, credible evidence” of any ethical violation, and that “while you are obviously dissatisfied with [the] decision… we lack the probable cause to investigate this matter further.”

    Both letters are headed “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.” He marked one “Exhibit M” in his own hand and filed them into the public divorce docket.

    Grievances against Judges Anthony J. Russo and Laura June Gallagher, Cuyahoga County Probate Court · Office of Disciplinary Counsel, Supreme Court of Ohio, File Nos. C1-1786J and C1-1787J

  12. 5 – 22 October 2021

    Grievances against his own lawyer, the police and the prosecutor — and his mother joins in

    He files a grievance against his own defense attorney, then one against the Rocky River Police Department and the city prosecutor. Both go into the divorce docket as exhibits.

    His mother files a sworn affidavit in the case asserting that “prejudicial bias has occurred in this court” and that “Judge Jones showed prejudice” — and files with it a copy of a disciplinary grievance she had lodged against that same judge, on a form that instructs complainants to keep the grievance confidential.

    The affidavit and the grievance are on His parents.

  13. 13 October 2021

    His parents’ motion for visitation is denied, and the court says why

    “Through filings with the Court, the paternal grandparents demonstrate a lack of understanding of Defendant’s diagnosed mental health condition.” The court finds it would be against the children’s best interest to let them in, and assesses costs against William and Kathy Horner.

    The ruling, and the filings it refers to, on His parents.

  14. 18 November 2021

    He does not appear, and loses everything by default

    The court finds he had “effectively withdrawn as a participant by his own pleading,” refused to take part in the Family Evaluation Services investigation so that it was terminated, told the court he no longer wanted Zoom contact with his children, and did not attend his own final hearing.

    He is granted no visitation or contact whatsoever until he petitions the court, complies with its orders, and proves he is “mentally and physically fit.” The court also finds he removed his wife’s paycheck from their joint account and had paid no support since August 2020.

    Judgment Entry of Divorce · Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, Division of Domestic Relations · No. DR-20-382383. The child support computation worksheet and the personal-property schedule are not reproduced.

  15. 13 – 28 December 2021

    The divorce is over. William Easton Horner files eight more motions in sixteen days.

    All eight ask the court to add material to the trial record, separately captioned firearm, tax returns, his mental health, father visitation and Zoom time, his physical fitness, perjurious affidavit and perjurious testimony. One runs to 83 pages.

    Their exhibits include copies of his own earlier filings, police reports, printed emails, trial transcript extracts and web articles.

    The 83-page one is “his mental health.” Among its exhibits is his email exchange with the Director of the court’s own Family Evaluation Services, the service appointed to evaluate the family. She tells him “I cannot force you to sign authorizations to release records. That is your choice. If I cannot conduct the evaluation in the absence of records… I inform the court.” He does not sign them. He also attaches his own filing captioned Defendant’s Election of Non Cooperation in Peaceful Protest.

    Of being told that access to his children depended on cooperating, William Easton Horner writes: “my children will not be ransomed against me to ‘force my compliance’ in any way, shape, or form. I do not negotiate with hostage takers.”

    Seven of the motion’s 83 pages are withheld.

  16. 27 April – 17 November 2022

    Four lawsuits in under seven months

    Against his former mother-in-law (27 April, dismissed in July for failure to prosecute); against his ex-wife and her divorce attorney (12 May, decided against him on summary judgment); against his ex-wife and the Cleveland Clinic, her employer (23 June, summary judgment against him); and against his ex-wife and St. Vincent Charity Hospital (17 November, dismissed in December 2023).

    The fourth was pleaded as medical malpractice but claims unauthorized release of medical records. It asks for “in excess of $5,000,000.00 in punitive damages” and attaches, as an exhibit, one of his own filings from the defamation case — the one in which he tells the court he is defending himself from the FBI and from assassination attempts.

    Nos. CV-22-962585, CV-22-963377, CV-22-965121, CV-22-971495

  17. 1 September 2022

    The court bars William Easton Horner from the court’s own building

    Acting on her own motion, the Administrative Judge finds he had been “emailing the Judge and county court personnel with his theories of the Court’s collusion with the Director of the FBI, Sheriff’s Department, and others,” and that he “seems to be not of sound mind and a danger to the Court.”

    He is enjoined from entering the courthouse, from harassing court personnel, and from contacting the court outside proceedings. All his hearings move to video.

  18. 3 – 5 October 2022

    He tries to subpoena the Director of the FBI

    In his suit against his ex-wife and the Cleveland Clinic he attempted to subpoena records from “Director of the FBI Christopher Wray,” from members of the Rocky River Police Department, from the Cuyahoga County Probate Court, and from the Rocky River Law Director. Opposing counsel recorded that he did the same thing in the defamation case — “in that case, just as in the present one.”

    No. CV-22-965121 · recounted in the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and sanctions, 19 May 2023, and n.11

    Five days earlier, in the same dispute, William Easton Horner wrote to the city’s law department: “This is your final warning…either produce the documents or I am going to use my superior cybersecurity skill and training, penetrate your firewalls, and tear the information out by force. I will then leave your servers in a melting heap of slag.” He copied roughly forty city employees, and told them that if they had a problem with it they could “take it up with Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI. I have CC’d him to this email through is Top Dog alias account.” He signs it “Easton Horner, Attorney Pro Se.”

    Email of 23 September 2022, filed as an exhibit · motion for subpoena service, No. CV-22-965121, filed 5 October 2022. The recipients’ email domains are redacted. “Through is” is his own wording, checked against the filing and left as he wrote it.

    See also. Three weeks earlier he had attacked the county courthouse’s email system — the attack and the conviction.

  19. 17 November 2022

    His answer to the defamation suit: a demand, a list of people he will expose, and a claim about what he can do to any computer on earth

    He answers the complaint himself. On the money, he tells the court he has “turned down higher paying data science jobs to remain in a cash economy which can’t be raided by this Court,” and that “your Honor can’t extract blood from a rock.”

    On the websites, he says the court has no power to reach them — “the Court simply does not possess the technical capability to remove the writing” — that they are “already receiving foot traffic in the thousands of visitors,” and asks how many more will come “once his name is attached to the website as the Judge who attempted and failed to silence a citizen’s voice.”

    The rest is an extended reading of Exodus. Pharaoh would not let Moses’ people go, so God sent the plagues; his demand, he writes, is the same — “Let my children go.” William Easton Horner then claims the Almighty has punished his ex-wife for refusing his demands: “He has ransacked her career, denied her promotion, and put her on a leave of absence from work. He has alienated her from her neighbors… and has bankrupted her financially through constant legal fees.” She is paying for “no less than seven different attorneys” and “the expenses upon Plaintiff must be tremendous.” Of himself, in the same breath: “Defendant’s cup runs over. He advances at work with a management team amazed at his dedication and encouraging of his fight against this injustice.”

    He does not name the employer, and does not name anyone on that team.

    Then comes a list. Seven times over three pages he names a person, states what he could expose about them, and makes it conditional in the same sentence — “But Defendant will, if she does not let the children go.” Among the seven are the Director of the FBI and the judge who heard his divorce. The demand is unchanged throughout: return the children, or this happens.

    Among the things he says were done to him: “She bore false witness against her husband to have him wrongfully incarcerated in a mental institution and fabricate drug charges to take his children from him.” No court has found that. Fifteen months later the same court found the opposite: that his published statements accusing her of criminal conduct were false, and awarded $1,064,234.75 against him for defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

    On the drugs specifically, the record contains his own answer. Eleven months before he wrote this, in a motion he filed himself, he told the court’s evaluator that he used cannabis and resented her calling it “substance abuse” or “illicit substances” — arguing only that it was legal elsewhere, and asking whether his “geographical location is what is making me an unfit Father in this Court’s eyes.” That passage is here, in his own filing.

    He closes on capability. “God has armed the father in this case with Forever stamps and the singular ability to tear open any digital machine on Earth and place the message of what was done there.” He signs off “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and tells the judge he is “already on the other side of the Red Sea beyond where your Honor’s arrows can reach.”

    Defendant’s Answer, No. CV-22-969917, filed pro se · the same day he filed the fourth lawsuit.

    See also. The claim about opening any machine was made eleven weeks after he attacked the county courthouse’s email system — the attack and the conviction. Eight weeks earlier he had told a city law department he would leave their servers in “a melting heap of slag.”

  20. 30 January – 27 April 2023

    One statement by his fiancée, filed in three cases under three different labels

    He filed a statement by Cristy Miller — described by opposing counsel as his “Amicus Witness” and “current fiancé” — as an “Amicus Brief and Discovery Evidence” in the Cleveland Clinic suit. On 30 January 2023 a nearly identical brief went into the civil stalking protection order case that the Cleveland Clinic had brought against him. On 27 April 2023 the same document was disclosed in the defamation case as an “Expert Report,” under the rule governing treating expert witnesses. She had treated no one.

    Within its own pages the document calls itself an expert report, an amicus brief, an amicus affidavit and eyewitness testimony. It carries two signature blocks — one “Amicus and Eyewitness for Defendant,” the other, on the sworn page, “for Plaintiff.” Filed the same day, his notice called her an “FBI special agent, counter cyberterrorism unit (Ret.)”; her own report called her a “19 year undercover private subcontractor with the FBI (ret.).”

    Nos. CV-22-965121, CV-22-969917, and the Clinic’s protection order petition of 1 Nov 2022 · plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and sanctions, 19 May 2023, n.12

    See also. Every claim in the statement, quoted — the Amazon call, the million dollars, the operative found dead in his truck.

  21. 27 March – 18 May 2023

    “Brute force attack” is his own phrase for it, and he used it as a caption

    In computing, a brute force attack is not clever. It is volume — throwing so many attempts at a system that it gives way. He had already done it once to the county courthouse’s email, seven months earlier, and later pleaded guilty to it. Here he was doing the same thing to the process itself, in three different forms, and naming it.

    504 motions. William Easton Horner filed a document captioned “DEFENDANT’S PETITION FOR DISCOVERY BY BRUTE FORCE ATTACK” and attempted to file 504 motions to the court’s docket. It asks for discovery orders “pursuant to each of the 84 Ohio Civil Rules” against six bodies at once — the Probate Court, the FBI, the Rocky River police and municipal court, St. Vincent Charity and the Cleveland Clinic.

    “There are a total of 504 motions, certainly one of them should unlock this courts pathetic shell game your Honor…respectfully submitted.”

    25,000 pennies. The same document purports to pay off the $250 contempt fine he had been ordered to cure. He cites 31 U.S.C. § 5103 on legal tender, and Citizens United for the proposition that “money is speech.”

    “As expressed in Defendant’s YouTube videos, which are still live, $250 doesn’t cover half of the contempt Defendant has for the corruption this courthouse has allowed. So he’s settled the public debt with 25,000 copies of the penny.”

    He adds that the coins are 97% zinc and worth about $500 melted down.

    2,688 pages. Told that a link to his own website was not working and that opposing counsel expected service by post, he refused both — and said he would put the documents into the court’s own docket instead.

    “Unless of course your firm wants to front the shipping/print charges for 2688 pages… The 2688 pages will be at the courthouse tomorrow. Once they get it scanned in, I’m sure Jayne can work to get you access to their copy through the court docket.”

    Jayne is the judge’s staff attorney. The scanning would have fallen to the clerk’s office.

    Exhibits to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and sanctions, 19 May 2023 · No. CV-22-969917

    See also. The courthouse email attack he pleaded guilty to · the “Top dog” emails.

  22. 9 May 2023

    William Easton Horner threatens to break into a hospital’s computer system

    Emailing counsel for St. Vincent Charity Medical Center about discovery, he wrote:

    “I should probably also disclose to you that I am a duly sword federal minuteman intelligence officer activated by Christopher Wray of the FBI to investigate corruption within the CCCCP.

    Should discovery not be provided in good faith, be advised I am fully authorized to crack the digital security of SVCMC and extract through Cyberforce those documents and evidence needed.”

    He then pointed the lawyer at a colleague:

    “However you can talk to Mr. Whitesell attorney of the Cleveland Clinic and ask him what happens to those who test these minuteman credentials and don’t participate in good faith discovery. He can describe in detail the digital pains such extractions can you inflict.”

    And closed:

    “Not making a threat, just making you fully aware of my minuteman credentials and my authorities should you decide not to comply.”

    It appears that there is no such thing as a federal minuteman intelligence officer. He wrote it eight months after the attack on the county courthouse’s email system, and six days after a capias issued for his arrest on the reindictment for it. He did not plead guilty to that attack until December 2024. Opposing counsel put this email into the record; it is one of the exhibits behind the vexatious litigator declaration.

    Exhibit to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and sanctions, 19 May 2023 · the underlying case is No. CV-22-971495

    See also. Where the “minuteman credentials” come from · the attack he pleaded guilty to.

  23. 25 April 2023

    He tells the court he will be sitting before Congress with the Director of the FBI

    Two days before the expert report was disclosed, he filed his own supplemental disclosures under Civ.R. 26. The first person listed as likely to have discoverable information is “Cristy Miller, FBI special operations (Ret.).” Among the documents listed are “Other documents provided to Defendant by Christopher Wray, FBI Director, in relations to Defendant’s Federal Minuteman investigation.”

    Under damages he claims economic loss in excess of $3.5 million, itemised to include “costs to go before the US Congress alongside Christopher Wray, FBI Director, to remove Defendant’s name from federal terrorist watch lists.”

    The filing carries a Defendant Affidavit swearing its contents are “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… under penalty of perjury.” He is not on any federal terrorist watch list that any record here discloses, and there is no record of any scheduled congressional appearance.

    Defendant’s Supplemental Disclosures, 25 April 2023 · No. CV-22-969917

    See also. The statement he filed two days later, claim by claim.

  24. 12 May 2023

    He moves against her a fifth time, and attaches the emails from “Top dog”

    His fifth motion to have his ex-wife held in contempt — captioned by him “DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR PLAINTIFF TO SHOW CAUSE…AGAIN” — argues she lied under oath about where he was living in 2018. It was denied.

    Attached to it is an email chain, subject line “Little bitches,” between his own Gmail address and an account in the name “Top dog <tdcommand1@gmail.com>” — the address his fiancée’s sworn statement identifies as an alias belonging to the Director of the FBI. Opposing counsel were copied in.

    The purported account writes back to both of them. To her: “You really do like to get drunk and spill your guts… I haven’t sold any secrets to BRICS despite what you think you know… I would truly hate for it to seem like treason!” To him: “If you could keep your mouth and the little bit he’s mouth shut the two of you would make perfect candidates for the project.” It signs off “A.” He filed this into a public court record as evidence in his own favor.

    No. CV-22-969917 · a property listing attached as Exhibit A is not reproduced

  25. 1 – 8 March 2023

    He asks to appear by video because he expects to be shot, and calls the divorce settlement a bounty on his own life

    Ordered to appear in person on 8 March, he moves to attend by Zoom instead. The reason he gives is that he expects to be killed on the way. William Easton Horner writes that if he is “pulled over by a police officer for a busted tail light” he may then be “executed with his stolen weapon being planted on him so the officer can say Defendant pulled a gun on him.”

    He gives a motive for it. He claims that the court itself gave his ex-wife reason to want him dead:

    “there is a $1 million murder bounty on Defendant’s head instituted by Judge Tonya R. Jones of the Domestic Relations court with Plaintiffs slated as sole beneficiaries.”

    What he is describing is the property division in his own divorce. The judgment entry of 18 November 2021 awarded his ex-wife exclusive and irrevocable ownership of the couple’s MassMutual policies, among them the two insuring his life. Their face values, from the insurer’s own summaries that he filed in the case, are $539,742 and $500,000 — so his arithmetic is right, and a divorce court’s allocation of two insurance policies is what he is calling a bounty on his head.

    The motion also asserts that Westlake officers in “tactical body armor with M-16” assaulted him, that his committal was arranged “in collusion with the FBI,” and that drug charges against him were “fabricated.” No court has made any such finding. He swore to the motion before a notary “under penalty of perjury.”

    He closes by telling the court in advance that if it refuses, “Defendant will not be attending.” On 7 March the court denies the motion and requires him in person. He does not attend. On 8 March he is held in contempt — $250 and thirty days, suspended so that he could comply.

    No. CV-22-969917 · motion filed 1 March 2023, denied 7 March 2023

  26. 2 August 2023

    The court declares William Easton Horner a vexatious litigator

    Filings “duplicative, frivolous, abusive, and lacking legal grounds,” by a litigant who “repeatedly asserts the same narratives across cases, fails to conform to court rules, fails to support his claims with competent evidence or argument, and resorts to threats and harassment of the litigants and courts.”

    Every element of that description had already appeared on the divorce docket, two years earlier, before any of the conduct the declaration was actually about.

    See also. The declaration in full, and what followed it — it bars him from bringing or continuing any legal proceeding in an Ohio trial court without first obtaining the court’s permission. The same court, the same day, entered a permanent injunction.

  27. 4 August – 14 December 2023

    He keeps litigating anyway, and the fourth suit is dismissed for exactly that

    Two days after the declaration he files a petition for discovery in the St. Vincent case. On 21 September he files an objection to dismissal and re-petitions for discovery. He does not ask anyone’s permission to do either.

    Ohio law reaches cases like this one directly. A declared vexatious litigator is prohibited from “continuing any legal proceedings that the vexatious litigator had instituted” before the declaration “without first obtaining leave” of the court that declared him — here, Judge Sheehan, and only Judge Sheehan. The hospital moves to dismiss on that ground on 31 August; his ex-wife joins on 2 October, telling the court there is “no indication that Plaintiff has requested leave nor that he has been granted leave to proceed.”

    On 14 December 2023 Judge Matia grants both motions. “This case is dismissed without prejudice.” His petition for discovery is denied, court costs are assessed to him, and the settlement conference and jury trial set for 2024 are canceled.

    No. CV-22-971495 · R.C. 2323.52(F)(1)

Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas · Domestic Relations Division, No. DR-20-382383 (Judge Tonya R. Jones; Magistrate Sharon Ditko-Bevione; Administrative Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze) and General Division, No. CV-22-969917 (Judge Brendan J. Sheehan)

See also. Where it led: the vexatious litigator declaration, a $1,064,234.75 judgment, and a felony conviction.

02

What the courts did about it

The orders that answered the conduct in the chronology above · No. CV-22-969917

2 August 2023 · R.C. § 2323.52

Declared a vexatious litigator, and listed by the Supreme Court of Ohio

He was indefinitely barred from bringing or continuing any legal proceeding in an Ohio trial court without first obtaining the court’s permission. A certified copy was sent to the Supreme Court of Ohio for publication, where it remains listed.

The court found his filings “duplicative, frivolous, abusive, and lacking legal grounds,” and found that he “repeatedly asserts the same narratives across cases, fails to conform to court rules, fails to support his claims with competent evidence or argument, and resorts to threats and harassment of the litigants and courts.”

The declaration rested on four lawsuits he brought between 27 April and 17 November 2022 — under seven months: against his ex-mother-in-law; against his ex-wife and her divorce attorney; against his ex-wife and the Cleveland Clinic; and against his ex-wife and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas · Judge Brendan J. Sheehan · No. CV-22-969917

See also. Every element of this description had already appeared on the divorce docket two years earlier — the chronology.

25 October 2023 · Trial

He asked the court to help him stay a fugitive

He did not appear for his own trial. The court recorded that he “asked this Court to assist him in remaining a fugitive from justice and to allow him to evade arrest for pending criminal charges in this county,” and refused — noting that his alleged threats to his safety were “no greater in the courthouse than they are in the uncontrolled outside world.”

He was arrested a month before that hearing. Officers of the Hamblen County Sheriff’s Department and the Morristown Police Department took him into custody in Tennessee on 21 September 2023, on a capias out of Cuyahoga County. He was released on bond pending extradition, and in November 2023 the Governor of Ohio signed a Requisition and Agent Authorization for his return. He was re-incarcerated on 31 January 2024 and held in the Hamblen County Jail.

He would later build a federal lawsuit on the claim that the arrest was unlawful, because the case behind it had already been dismissed. The dates are the other way round. He had been reindicted on 18 April 2023; a capias on that new case issued on 3 May 2023 and was still live; and the first case was still pending on the day officers came for him. It was not dismissed until the following day.

There is one loose end, and it is a small one. When the first case was dismissed its capias was left un-recalled until February 2024 — the recall entry says so in terms. But that happened after the arrest, not before it, and the second capias was valid throughout. The federal court said as much, and had something to say to his lawyer about how often the opposite was repeated.

Trial entry, No. CV-22-969917 · the criminal record, Nos. CR-22-675557 and CR-23-680296 · Ohio Governor’s requisition, November 2023

26 September 2025 – 6 April 2026 · Federal court

He sued the judges. And the Governor. And the United States.

He brought a federal lawsuit against thirteen defendants on fifteen counts, including both Ohio judges who had ruled against him, the Governor of Ohio, the U.S. Marshals Service and the United States of America.

On 26 September 2025 the court dismissed the county, the two judges, the Governor and the sheriff’s department — on judicial immunity, quasi-judicial immunity, sovereign immunity, lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. On 31 March 2026 it dismissed the remaining federal defendants and refused leave to amend as futile. On 6 April 2026 he voluntarily dismissed the last three. Nothing survived.

The second opinion also carries a rebuke to his own attorney. His case turned on the claim that he had been arrested on a capias from a case that was already dismissed. The defendants put the actual criminal pleadings before the court, which showed the opposite. Counsel went on saying it anyway. The judge set out Rule 3.3(a)(1) — “a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal” — and Rule 11(b)(3), and wrote:

“The Court has serious concerns regarding counsel’s conduct here. Zealous advocacy does not permit misrepresentation of the record, especially true here where those representations are contradicted by readily available public information. The record reflects that Plaintiff’s arrest followed his reindictment, contrary to counsel’s repeated representations, and occurred before the first indictment was dismissed.”

No sanction was imposed. The defendants did not ask for one and the court declined to begin proceedings on its own. The opinion criticizes the lawyer, not the client, and does not name him.

U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Tennessee · Judge Clifton L. Corker · Horner v. Cuyahoga County, No. 2:24-cv-175 · Documents 86, 102 and 103

See also. He had already been declared a vexatious litigator in Ohio, and the arrest itself is set out above.

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