YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals rejected a request from Michael Cox, a Youngstown police detective sergeant, to reconsider its dismissal of his case, which dates back to August 2018, against the city to require the civil service commission to grant a hearing to consider him for a promotion.

“Cox has failed to demonstrate any obvious error in our decision or to identify an issue that we overlooked,” the court ruled Tuesday in a 3-0 decision. “Instead, his applications primarily reflect disagreement with our reasoning and conclusions, which is not a proper basis for reconsideration.”

The court, in a 3-0 decision Oct. 10, threw out the case after taking only written arguments on whether to honor Cox’s request to dismiss the appeal.

“The crux of Cox’s argument is that the court improperly decided the merits of his case without first addressing whether we had jurisdiction over the appeal,” Tuesday’s decision read. “This argument fundamentally misunderstands our authority to address jurisdictional issues sua sponte. It is well established that an appeals court may sua sponte review subject matter jurisdiction in the first instance.”

Sua sponte is a legal term meaning a court can take action without motions from parties, such as if it determines it lacks jurisdiction over the case.

In the appeals court’s Tuesday decision, it wrote: “Cox also argues that we should have addressed his motion to dismiss and proceeded through full briefing and oral argument. This misconstrues the nature of jurisdictional dismissals. When a court determines that the underlying proceedings are void for lack of jurisdiction, it need not — and indeed, cannot — proceed to consider the merits through standard appellate procedures.”

S. David Worhatch, Cox’s attorney, also requested in an Oct. 21 motion for en banc consideration — meaning all four of the court’s judges rather than the three who oversaw the case — would hear the matter contending the decision conflicted with earlier cases. The court wrote there is no conflict and “our current decision is informed by subsequent guidance from the Ohio Supreme Court that was unavailable at the time of the earlier appeals.”

The case involving Cox dates back to an Aug. 15, 2018, lieutenant promotional exam and has twice been heard by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Worhatch recommends Cox seek another appeal to the Supreme Court. An appeal must be filed no later than 45 days from Tuesday.

In its Oct. 10 ruling, the appeals court overturned a June 27 ruling from Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney that Cox deserved to have an evidentiary hearing in front of the city’s civil service commission to consider him for a promotion to lieutenant. Sweeney on July 12 rejected the city’s motion to reconsider and the city appealed July 29 to the 7th District.

The appeals court’s decision states Cox’s motions for reconsideration by the city’s civil service commission were untimely and agreed with the city that Sweeney “patently and unambiguously lacked continuing jurisdiction over Cox’s administrative appeal.”

The Supreme Court on Aug. 30, 2023, rejected the city’s arguments to dismiss the case. But it limited Cox’s arguments when it sent the case back to Sweeney.

Cox objects to how the city civil service commission ranked applicants for a lieutenant promotional test. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown promoted William Ward to lieutenant May 20, 2019, based on scores on a written civil service test given almost a year earlier.

Cox and other detective sergeants took a promotional test in June 2018. During the test, Cox objected that portions of it were based on an outdated examination book.

The commission certified the results of the test on Aug. 15, 2018, with Ward at the top of the list and Cox finishing third, two points behind Ward. Had four questions on the test been properly scored instead of each person getting credit for all of them, Cox states he would have tied for first and based on time of service he would have been No. 1 on the test.

Cox brought the case about Brown’s decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled Aug. 18, 2021, that the officer “did not file a timely appeal” opposing the 2019 commission’s decision. But the court also ruled that the commission didn’t provide “a final and appealable order” to him about the decision.

In that case, the court stated Cox had 30 days from July 17, 2019 — the day the commission approved the minutes from its June 19, 2019, meeting in which it determined Cox’s case was concluded — to appeal to common pleas court. Cox failed to do so in those 30 days. He instead pursued an appeal to the State Personnel Board of Review, which dismissed it.

Cox filed with the commission a “motion for entry of final appealable order and motion for reconsideration” on May 14, 2020. The commission told Cox at its June 17, 2020, meeting that it would take no further action and Cox filed a case on July 17, 2020, in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Sweeney determined May 16, 2022, that the commission “violated its own rule” by not issuing a “final and appealable order” and ordered the commission to do so in compliance with its own rules. The 7th District Court of Appeals agreed with Sweeney after the city appealed.

The city then filed an appeal June 28, 2022, with the Ohio Supreme Court to close out the Cox case contending the commission’s June 17, 2020, decision was a final order and Sweeney didn’t have jurisdiction.

In its Aug. 30, 2023, decision, the Supreme Court disagreed with the city’s argument regarding the civil service commission’s 2020 ruling and ordered the matter referred back to Sweeney. But the court told the judge she didn’t have jurisdiction over Cox’s 2019 administrative appeal because that had already been decided.

The Supreme Court determined Cox’s appeal of the June 17, 2020, commission decision was “timely.”

Sweeney ruled June 27 that Cox was correct in asserting the commission committed a “clear error” in 2019 and repeated it in 2020 when it did not convene an evidentiary hearing.

In its Oct. 10 decision, the 7th District wrote because the “commission had lost jurisdiction to reconsider either its 2018 or 2019 decisions long before Cox filed his May 14, 2020, motion” that latter decision, “which formed the basis of Cox’s administrative appeal to the trial court was a nullity,” the appeals court ruled. “Any judgment resulting from such a motion, including the trial court’s June 27 order that is the subject of this appeal, is likewise a nullity.”

It wrote Tuesday: “We appropriately exercised this authority by determining that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to decide his May 14, 2020, motion for reconsideration. Once we concluded that the commission’s 2020 decision was a nullity due to its lack of jurisdiction to entertain Cox’s untimely motion,” the court dismissed the matter “and the appeal before us (was) entirely consistent with established precedent.”