Ohio Caselaw Research Strategy – Using the Annotated ORC

Say you are asked to find cases about when a driver’s license in Ohio can be permanently revoked. You know that the Ohio statute on license suspension is ORC 4507.16, but you know you want caselaw, so you might be temped to go straight to the Ohio cases database in Lexis or Westlaw and start doing a search. You’ll probably get loads of results, requiring lots of time reviewing them for relevancy.

There’s a more efficient way to approach this question. By using an annotated Ohio Revised Code, you can quickly hone in on cases interpreting specific issues related to a statute, and sometimes you won’t even have to do any searching at all to find what you’re looking for.

It works like this – in Lexis or Westlaw, pull up your statute, so ORC 4507.16. An annotated code collects all of the caselaw that interprets that statute, and organizes the most relevant caselaw topically so that it’s easy to navigate.

In Westlaw, you’ll find these cases under Notes of Decisions, and in Lexis under Notes to Decisions – they will be located either to the top or to the left of your statute. Then you can use each database’s table of contents organizing these interpreting cases. For our ORC section, you’ll see the accompanying cases organized into topics like constitutionality, admissible evidence, judicial discretion, etc.

In both Westlaw and Lexis you’ll see topics related to suspension. By going to that section, you can quickly narrow down to cases discussing permanent suspension.

You may be wondering about using Bloomberg Law for this example. While Bloomberg Law does not offer a traditional annotated Ohio Revised Code like Westlaw or Lexis, it does offer their Smart Code feature. Smart Code identifies sections of court opinions that reference a particular code section. What’s missing in Smart Code is the nicely organized table of contents for the interpreting caselaw.