St. Paddy & Las Vegas Body Cam

Ohio Public Records Briefing - Edition #109

Welcome back to this pre-St. Patrick’s Day Public Records Briefing edition. For this special time of year, we’ve added a Guest Editor to this edition. Welcome him!

This week we have a court case where a convicted criminal’s blitz of 46 public records requests in two hours led to a $1,000 damages award, plus a bodycam review from Las Vegas. Sounds like a great script for a movie!

Court Case(s) Review: State ex rel. Luikart v. Washington Court House, 2026-Ohio-111.

Get a drink of water because this case is crazy! So far this year, the Ohio Supreme Court has been super busy churning out public records cases involving prisoners and criminal defendants. This week’s decision features a paltry 45 public records requests from a defendant with mucho time on his hands.

Aaron Luikart, who was facing criminal charges in the city’s municipal court, sent 46 emails over a two-hour span on a Sunday evening in November 2024 (closed circuit video of him sending his requests here, probably). You read that right, 46 emails. Each email requested one or two specific documents from more than 40 different cases in that same court—but none from his own ongoing criminal case. The city attorney prosecuting Luikart, misinterpreted these as requests for discovery materials tied to Luikart’s case and ignored them entirely. Nine days later, Luikart filed a lawsuit asking the court to force the city to hand over the records. And the kicker, he asked for $45,000 in statutory damages for the delay.