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Only a small portion of the 3.5 million lawsuits that come before Ohio's trial courts make it to the Supreme Court of Ohio. Justice Judith L. French told us that when deciding which cases to hear, the justices look for cases that are of great general or public interest. "We get to decide what we want to decide. It's a great way to be a judge. What I'm looking for is a case that doesn't just involve those two parties. If you're upset with with the court of appeals and you come up and say to the court how wrong the lower court decision was and why it's important to you personally, that's not necessarily going to cut it. What we're looking for is not something that relates not to these two parties, but something that could relate to parties across Ohio." The Supreme Court of Ohio also considers death penalty cases, cases involving public utilities, taxes, and issues involving discipline of lawyers and judges. The justices have an interesting way of deciding who writes majority opinions on their cases - they draw numbered marbles out of a bottle and whichever justice's marble is chosen writes the majority opinion. Ohio Supreme Court sessions are video recorded and streamed on their website and on many TV stations across the state. Also at Monday's meeting, we heard from Kevin Kelly from the Rotary International Foundation. He thanked us for our support of the Foundation and told the story of a contribution the Foundation recently received from the estate of a veterinarian from the tiny Rotary Club of Berwick, Pennsylvania. Three contributions totaled $7.2 million and they were earmarked for PolioPlus, so that was matched 2 for 1, for a total of more than $21 million. The Rotary Foundation is truly making a difference in the world, and it all starts with Rotarians like us.
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