qm202

 

The Discussion Question is:

Hamilton County judges try thousands of cases per year. In an overwhelming majority of the cases disposed, the verdict stands as rendered. However, some cases are appealed, some of the cases are reversed. The Enquirer conducted a study of cases handled by Hamilton County judges over a three- year period. Shown in the below links are the results for 182,908 cases handled (disposed) by 38 judges in

Common Pleas Court

,

Domestic Relations Court

, and

Municipal Court

. Two of the judges (Dinkelacker and Hogan) did not serve in the same court for the entire three-year period.

Common Pleas Court
Domestic Relations Court
Municipal Court

The purpose of the newspaper’s study was to evaluate the performance of the judges. Appeals are often the result of mistakes made by judges, and the newspaper wanted to know which judges were doing a good job and which were making too many mistakes. You are called in to assist in the data analysis. Use your knowledge of probability to help with the ranking of the judges. You also may be able to analyze the likelihood of appeal and reversal for cases handled by different courts.

Prepare a report with your rankings of the judges. Also, include an analysis of the likelihood of appeal and case reversal in the three courts. At a minimum, your report should include the rank of the judges within each court. State the criteria you used and provide a rationale for your choice. Which court shows a better quality performance.

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Common Pleas Court
Judge	Cases Disposed	Appealed Cases	Reversed Cases
F. Cartolano	3,03		7			13		12
T. Crush	3,372	119		10
P. Dinkelacker	1,25	8	44
T. Hogan	1,954			6
R. Kraft	3,138		127
W. Mathews	2,264	91		18
W. Morrissey	3,032		121	22
N. Nadel	2,959	131	20
A. Ney	3,219	125	14
R. Niehaus	3,353	16
T. Nurre	3,000
J. O’Connor	2,969	129
R. Ruehlman	3,205	145
J. Sundermann	955	60
A. Tracey	3,141
R. Winkler	3,089	88
Total	43,945	1,762	199

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Domestic Relations Court
Judge	Cases Disposed	Appealed Cases	Reversed Cases
P. Cunningham	2,	7	9
P. Dinkelacker	6,001	19	4
D. Gaines	8,799	48
R. Panioto	12,970		3
Total	30,499	106	17

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Municipal Court
Judge	Cases Disposed	Appealed Cases	Reversed Cases
M. Allen						6			4		9		4	3
N. Allen			7	8		34
T. Black	7,9			5		41
D. Davis	7,736
L. Gaines	5,	28	35				13
K. Grady	5,	25		0
D. Hair	2,532
D. Helmick	7,900	29
T. Hogan	2,308
J. Kenney	2,798
J. Luebbers	4,698
W. Mallory	8,277	38
M. Marsh	8,219
B. Mattingly	2,971
A. Mestemaker	4,975
M. Painter	2,239
J. Rosen	7,790
M. Schweikert	5,403	33
D. Stockdale	5,371	22
J. West	2,797
Total	108,464	500	104

Review of the Question:

The discussion question asks for the class to review the three court reports that analyze each Judges number of disposed, appealed and reversed cases. It clarified that appeals are often the result of the judge’s mistake. I did some research and read on AmericanBar.org that, “appeals in any case is usually based on arguments that there were errors in the trial’s procedure or errors in the judge’s interpretation of the law”. I have learned a couple terms from my mom going through a lawsuit due to a severe car accident she was not at fault for. After 4 years of battle, her case finally came to an end. This means the proceedings of the case are completed.

In conclusion, we want to review the number of disposed cases to the number appealed cases.

Common Pleas Court:

The newspaper called me in to determine who did a good job with the least number of mistakes and to let them know who is making the most mistakes. The judge that had the best performance with the lowest ranked mistakes was P. Dinkelacker with 44 mistakes and 1258 completed cases, T. Hogan with 60 mistakes and 1,954 completed cases and lastly J. Sundermann with 60 mistakes and 955 completed cases.

The judge with the most mistakes that needs to be address is R.Ruehlman with 145 appealed cases and 3,205 completed cases, secondly is F. Cartolano with 137 appeals and 3,037 disposed completed, lastly is R. Niehaus with 137 appeals and 3,353 completed. Although Cartolano and Niehaus have the same amount of mistakes, Cartolano has less completed cases than Niehaus so that’s why he is ranked as second most mistakes.

Domestic Relations Court

Again, we have below two reports for the Domestic Relation of Disposed and Appealed cases. First, we are going to take a look at which judge had the best performance. The first judge who had the least number of mistakes was P.Cunningham with only 7 appeals and 2,729 completed cases, P.Dinkelacker has 19 appeals and 6,001 completed cases and third was R. Panioto who had 32 appealed cases and 12,970 disposed cases.

The second review will be who made the most mistakes and needs some improvement. That diagram makes it fairly obvious that D. Gaines needs to work on their performance. They had appealed cases 48 appealed cases; however, they did have a decent amount of completed cases of 8,799 cases.

Municipal Court:

The last court to review over judges is the Municipal Court. There were a couple judges who had really low appealed cases, however, their disposed cases were not nearly as many as some with a little more appealed case. With that being said I decided to not count judges J.West, M.Painter, J. Kenny, D.Hair or K.Grady in the count for best performance. I will considered them in the area of need to perform better since they have such low disposed numbers compared to the other judges who are starting at 5,500+. The judges mentioned only have 2,000-3,000 disposed cases which is not nearly close to the top number of 8,277.

The judges that did perform the best was W.Mallory with 8,277 disposed cases and 38 appealed cases, M.Marsh with 8,219 disposed cases and 34 disposed cases, and lastly J.Rosen with 7,790 disposed and 41 disposed. Disposed numbers were higher than the judges mentioned with the low disposed numbers but these judges disposed numbers were close to 9,000.

Source:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network/how_courts_work/appeals/