YOUNGSTOWN — Attorneys for Youngstown and its civil service commission told the Ohio Supreme Court that a request by a city police detective sergeant to compel the commission to grant him a hearing to consider him for a promotion is unwarranted.

Detective Sgt. Michael R. Cox’s case dates back to a June 16, 2018, lieutenant promotional exam, and the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled on two other matters involving this issue.

S. David Worhatch, Cox’s attorney, filed a request Dec. 30 with the Supreme Court to overturn an Oct. 10 decision by the 7th District Court of Appeals in favor of the city after taking only written arguments on whether to dismiss the appeal and not the merits of the case.

In separate responses, filed Wednesday, attorneys for the city and the civil service commission urged the court not to accept the case.

Deputy Law Director Adam Buente, who represents the city and Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, wrote: “This case presents a clear-cut missed statute of limitations and is of not great public interest. This is especially so because this very court already squarely held that (Cox) failed to timely appeal the order of the (commission). Counsel for (Cox) nevertheless was able to keep this case alive for several years by filing a motion for reconsideration almost a year after the blown statute and circumnavigating between various forums on procedural technicalities.”

Emily Anglewicz, an attorney with the Roetzel & Andress law firm in Akron representing the civil service commission, wrote: “This appeal does not present questions of public or great general interest that warrant Supreme Court review. Rather, it involves the application of settled law regarding a court’s obligation to ensure that it has subject matter jurisdiction over a case. Moreover, the issues at the heart of this case have already been examined by this court twice before.”

She added: “Any additional review would only impact the parties to this case, not the public. The court should decline jurisdiction.”

Anglewicz pointed to the Ohio Constitution that states the Supreme Court “sits to settle the law, not to settle cases.”

In his request to the Supreme Court to hear the case, Worhatch wrote: “This case raises a substantial constitutional question and is one of public or great general interest.”

Buente wrote that Cox missed the deadline to appeal a civil service commission decision by a year and Worhatch’s “attempts to keep this case alive on procedural technicalities were not of public interest in the last four years and are not in the public interest now.”

The 7th District Court of Appeals ruled Oct. 10 in favor of the city, overturning 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 the promotion.

After Sweeney’s ruling, Worhatch said the judge “found that the city’s civil service rules obligated the commission to convene a hearing and not just dismiss my client’s appeal on the grounds that he supposedly did not file in a timely manner.”

Sweeney on July 12 rejected the city’s motion to reconsider, and the city appealed July 27 to the 7th District.

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

In his latest filing, Buente wrote: “After five years of litigation, the 7th District finally called a spade a spade and held that the motion for reconsideration was nothing more than a procedural maneuver to resurrect a missed statute of limitations.”

Worhatch had asked for the appeals court to reconsider its decision because the “judgment is the byproduct of obvious errors.”

The appeals court rejected the reconsideration request on Nov. 19, stating the officer “failed to demonstrate any obvious error in our decision or to identify an issue we overlooked. Instead, his applications primarily reflect disagreement with our reasoning and conclusion, which is not a proper basis for reconsideration.”

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. 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 on June 16, 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 Cox 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 the 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 20, 2020. The commission told Cox at its June 17, 2020, meeting that it would take no further action because the request was untimely. 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.”