On Tuesday, September 9th, Ohio’s Third District Appellate Court upheld the validity of the merger between two water and sewer districts organized under ORC 6119. Attorneys Chris Frasor and Carl Ireland participated in the underlying trial court litigation and the subsequent appellate case.
The litigation stemmed from the Northwestern Water & Sewer District and Henry County Regional Water & Sewer District’s September 2019 decision to merge into a single district. The merger itself was based on ORC 6119.06(Y), which allows two regional water and sewer districts to merge into one district by super-majority vote of the districts’ respective boards. This appears to be the first time this merger procedure has been used in the State of Ohio.
Following the resolution to merge and to petition the local trial court to amend the Henry County District’s petition, the City of Napoleon challenged the proposed petition amendment as well as the underlying merger.
The District was successful at the trial court level, and the City appealed that decision to Ohio’s Third District Appellate Court on a number of grounds, seeking to unwind the merger as well as the petition amendment. The Court of Appeals’ opinion ordered the trial court to dismiss the petition amendment as unnecessary and found that the merger took place successfully and according to Ohio law.
Frasor Ireland LLP’s Chris Frasor is quoted in the Northwest Signal discussing the decision, and a link can be found here on the front page of the September 10th, 2020 edition:
https://www.northwestsignal.net/eedition/
A link to the Third District’s decision can be found here:
http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/3/2020/2020-Ohio-4341.pdf
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