"Old Medina County Courthouse" Has Holes in Floor

There are actually two buildings that house the Medina County Common Pleas Court and the Medina County Clerk of Courts. One of them is a Victorian structure that is 170 years old and the other is a relatively much newer building that was built in 1968.

The older building houses the Medina County Domestic Relations Court, the Medina County Adult Probation Department, part of the Medina County Clerk of Courts staff, and the Medina County Juvenile Court Probation Department.

The newer building is where the two General Division Judges of the Medina County Common Pleas Court are located; the Medina County Law Library; the Medina County Probate and Juvenile Court Judge; and the main operations of the Medina County Clerk of Courts.

The Victorian building, while charming, has a lot more maintenance issues than the 1968 building. This was shown last week when an employee of Domestic Relations Judge Mary Kovack stepped through the floor of the Domestic Relations Court. Judge Kovack believes that the steam pipes that heat the building weakened the wood floor.

A more detailed account can be found by clicking here.

Overheard in the Courthouse

A local Medina attorney stopped by this past week to tell my staff and myself about an interesting conversation he overheard in the Medina County Courthouse. He was passing the Domestic Relations Court area when he came across a younger woman talking to her attorney. As he passed by, he overheard her say to her attorney, "I am getting my gun tomorrow." As he walked on, he wondered what exactly she was referring to, given the fact that he was in the Domestic Relations Court.

If you overhear something that grabs your attention while walking through the Medina County Courthouse, email it to me at judgejameskimbler@yahoo.com. Thanks.

Google Adds Legal Opinions & Articles to Search Engine

The search engine Google has added legal opinions and journals to the material that can be searched by going to the website www.google.com. A visitor to the Google website can access this feature by clicking on the word "more" that appears in the tool bar at the top of the Google website. A menu then drops down which lists several choices. One of the choices listed is "Scholar". When the visitor clicks on the word "Scholar" he or she goes to a new search page which allows you to type in search terms and then you can choose articles that involve patents or legal opinions and journals.

Let's suppose that a visitor wanted to look for opinions that had the terms "Supreme Court of Ohio", "due process" and "traffic stop". Our visitor would go to the Google website, click on the word "more" in the tool bar and then click on the word "Scholar" in the drop down menu. Once our visitor was directed to the "Scholar" page, he or she would type in the terms listed above, click on the choice of "legal opinions and journals" and then conduct the search.

Our hypothetical visitor would then find that there were 122 matches for those terms. They would include both Ohio Supreme Court opinions as well as opinions from other courts such as the United States Supreme Court. Our visitor would then click on the matches that he or she thought were relevant to the search.

The main advantage to this Google feature is that unlike either the Lexis or Westlaw search engines, it is free. The main disadvantage is that unlike those search engines, the search cannot be directed to just one state's law.

One possible use for this feature is that in courthouses like ours in Medina County which have free Wi-Fi Internet access it would be possible to do some quick free research while waiting for court hearings.

There is also an article about this feature on the "Scholar" page that explains in more detail what Google wants to accomplish with this feature. The article also lists some of the people involved in this project. This new feature is definitely worth the time it takes to check it out.