Leppla Associates has represented family and business clients in commercial and personal litigation for over 25 years. The firm also handles probate matters as well as malpractice, injury, environmental, real estate & zoning, corporate & contracting, business and land use claims in Ohio and Florida.

Ohio Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Homeowners

In a decision announced January 17, 2008, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of homeowners represented by Leppla Associates in a land use dispute concerning efforts by a developer to place undersized lots in an existing subdivision. The Court reversed a procedural attack on a trial court decision by Warren County Common Pleas Judge Neil Bronson, which upheld the right of the Hunter, Ohio homeowners to control the use and size of neighborhood lots through private property convenants.

The developer now faces the prospect of dealing with third parties to whom lots were sold, as well as the homeowners, following a decision which effectively deems lot splitting and associated building development in the neighborhood to be wrongful.

In the decision authored by Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, reaching a result which six of the seven Justices supported, the Court held, "there is no requirement... that the moving party must negate the nonmoving party's every possible defense..."  The developer had claimed that the homeowners impermissibly delayed in opposing a new development, yet failed to offer sufficient proof of the claim in the developer's own reply to a Motion for Summary Judgment filed on behalf of the homeowners by Leppla Associates.

Gary J. Leppla, who argued the case last November before the Ohio Supreme Court, commented, "This is a great victory effectively upholding the rights of the families we represented to control the development of their own neighborhoods, through use of responsible property covenants.

These homeowners have been patient, intelligent and dedicated in acting together, and hanging together, to oppose the change the developer has tried to wrongfully force on their immediate community. The Supreme Court cut through to the essential procedural reality, giving new life to the use of Civil Rule 56 on behalf of the proponent of claims. It minimizes the ability of a party defending a claim (which in this case was a counterclaim) to simply rely upon a litany of defenses without placing credible evidence before a court. This precedent will be of great benefit to any party attempting to efficiently cut through unsupported defenses."

The citation to the case is Todd Development Corp. v. Morgan, et.al. Slip Opinon No. 2008 Ohio 87. Opinion available at