The Ohio Supreme Court disqualified a retired judge from presiding over a case after the jurist allegedly suggested a readiness for physical confrontation and threatened to jail a vexatious litigant if he attempted to file anything without the court’s permission.
The high court determined that Judge Robert P. Ruehlman, a retired judge sitting by assignment on the Jackson County Court of Common Pleas, General and Domestic Relations Division, was disqualified from presiding over Jackson v. Ward, concluding that an objective observer would conclude that he was prejudiced against the litigant, Roger Dean Ward.
