Key Points

  • A for-cause challenge under R.C. 2313.17(B)(9), that a prospective juror cannot be fair and impartial or will not follow the law, is a principal challenge, and a valid one requires disqualification without trial-court discretion.
  • The court overruled Berk v. Matthews (1990) and Hall v. Banc One Mgt. Corp. (2007) to the extent they held that trial courts have discretion over such challenges.
  • Appellate courts must review a trial court's ruling on the validity of such a challenge for competent, credible evidence, not abuse of discretion.
  • Trial courts must consider a prospective juror's answers over the whole of voir dire; a raised hand in response to a long, leading group question does not by itself establish unwillingness to follow the law.
  • Competent, credible evidence supported the trial court's rejection of challenges to four prospective jurors, so the defense verdict in the Price medical-malpractice case was affirmed.

The Ohio Supreme Court held on Nov. 2 that trial judges have no discretion to seat a prospective juror whose answers show the juror cannot be impartial or will not follow the court's instructions, overruling two of its own precedents. The court nonetheless upheld a defense verdict in a medical-malpractice suit in which the plaintiffs had sought $30 million, finding that the four jurors they challenged never actually made that showing.

Justice Deters wrote the opinion of the court, joined by Chief Justice Kennedy and Justices Fischer, DeWine, Hawkins and Shanahan. Justice Brunner concurred in the judgment only. The court affirmed the Second District Court of Appeals, which had ruled against the estate of Harold Gene Price and his widow, Cynthia Price.

The decision changes how Ohio appeals courts review a trial judge's refusal to remove a juror for bias. Those rulings had been reviewed for abuse of discretion. Under the new decision, an appellate court asks whether the trial court's finding is supported by "competent, credible evidence." The court also directed trial judges to weigh everything a prospective juror says during voir dire rather than a single answer or a show of hands.

Price sued in 2021, alleging that doctors failed to follow up on a lesion found on her husband's right kidney in a 2017 MRI. According to the complaint, he was diagnosed in 2020 with cancer originating in that kidney and died less than five months later. The case went to trial against Dr. Latha Venkatesh and Kettering Physician Network; Dr. Sharat Kalvakota; and Dr. Shachi Lovekar and Nephrology Associates of Dayton.

During jury selection, Price's lawyer asked the panel how many members, "regardless of the evidence or the Court's instruction," would require proof by more than a preponderance of the evidence. Prospective jurors Kerns and Hicks raised their hands. Later questions about mental-anguish damages drew raised hands from Vance and Walters-Sen. After learning of the $30 million demand, Vance said that such an award "could decimate their company" and added, "I don't see any way that I could decide who is in the right and who is in the wrong."

When defense counsel later asked whether they could apply the law as instructed, Hicks answered, "I assume so," and Vance replied, "I think so, sure." The trial court denied Price's challenges for cause to all four. In rejecting the challenge to Hicks, the judge said the questions about the burden of proof drew raised hands but "then it died on the vine" for lack of follow-up.

Price used peremptory challenges to strike Vance and Walters-Sen, and Kerns was removed after suffering a panic attack. Only Hicks sat on the eight-person jury, which returned a verdict for the defendants. The Second District held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion as to three of the jurors and that any error as to Kerns was not prejudicial.

The case turned on R.C. 2313.17(B)(9), which lists as good cause for removal that a prospective juror's answers show the person "cannot be a fair and impartial juror or will not follow the law as given to the person by the court." The statute classifies that ground as a principal challenge, a common-law category in which a valid challenge results in automatic disqualification and bars efforts to rehabilitate the juror through further questioning.

In Berk v. Matthews, decided in 1990, the court treated the predecessor provision as a matter of trial-court discretion without discussing its status as a principal challenge. In Hall v. Banc One Mgt. Corp., decided in 2007, the court suggested that the legislature's inclusion of that ground in the list "appear[ed] to be misplaced because that challenge was not part of the common law."

Justice Deters wrote that the court was "not swayed by the dicta in Hall" and rejected its reading. "Our role as judges is to consider the statute as it is written, not how we think the General Assembly meant to write it," Justice Deters wrote. Under the statutory text, the opinion held, "a trial court has no discretion when a valid challenge is made against a prospective juror under R.C. 2313.17(B)(9): the prospective juror must be disqualified."

The court then held that a trial judge must first decide whether such a challenge is valid. Because the statute refers to a juror's "answers," the opinion said, that means "multiple answers, not just one." Justice Deters added that "[v]oir dire questions may be circuitous or leading—perhaps even misleading," and that later answers may show a prospective juror will follow the law.

Turning to the group question Price's counsel had posed about the burden of proof, Justice Deters wrote: "That a prospective juror raised his or her hand at the end of that question, standing alone, does not demonstrate that prospective juror's unwillingness to follow the law as instructed by the court." The opinion noted that at least eight prospective jurors raised their hands and that Price's counsel did not challenge all of them for cause.

The court found that Kerns's remark that couples should "work out" their problems rather than sue "exhibited a misunderstanding about the nature of the claims rather than an unwillingness to follow the law." It said Walters-Sen's statement that she saw things in "shades of gray" showed openness to the facts, and that Vance and Hicks agreed to apply the law as instructed.

Justice Brunner, according to the opinion's announcement of the vote, would have held that on appellate review, the court need not make arbitrary changes to established law that the court of appeals applied correctly.

Lawyers for the Price estate included Charles H. Cooper Jr. of Cooper Elliot. Dr. Venkatesh and Kettering Physician Network were represented by Shannon K. Bockelman of Reminger Co., L.P.A. Kaitlin L. Madigan of Weston Hurd, L.L.P., filed for amicus curiae the Ohio Association of Civil Trial Attorneys, which urged affirmance.

With the Second District's judgment affirmed, the defense verdict stands. The ruling was issued as Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-4270, which remains subject to formal revision before publication in the Ohio Official Reports.