Opinion

City of Portsmouth v. McGraw

  • 21 Ohio St. 3d 117
  • 21 Ohio B. 422
  • 488 N.E.2d 472
  • 1986 Ohio LEXIS 540
Court
Ohio Supreme Court
Filed
Jan 22, 1986
Status
Published
Author
Celebrezze
On the bench
Brown, Celebrezze, Douglas, Holmes, Locher, Sweeney, Wright
Cited by
10 cases

The opinion

Celebrezze, C.J.,

dissenting. According to the majority, the city of Portsmouth may make LaVeeda McGraw an offer of services which she *123 cannot refuse and for which she must pay whether or not she needs those services.

I question the wisdom of the city’s decision to arbitrarily slap McGraw, a Portsmouth senior citizen, with a criminal prosecution for failing to pay the fee for garbage collection service which she did not use. Further, I fail to see the fairness in the manner in which the city has selectively enforced this ordinance. Other non-users of the city’s garbage collection service and literally hundreds of persons whose payments were delinquent were not prosecuted as was appellee. McGraw’s only “offense” was making a quite sensible objection to the payment of a fee for a service which she neither wanted nor needed.

I join the well-reasoned dissents of Justices Brown and Sweeney and support their conclusion that the city of Portsmouth may not constitutionally prosecute appellee for her failure to pay for a service which she did not use.

Sweeney and C. Brown, JJ., concur in the foregoing dissenting opinion.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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