HB 197 took effect immediately upon Governor DeWine’s signature on Friday, March 27, 2020. Our Ohio State Bar Association was instrumental in working on this. The popular press covered the legislation’s changes to tax filing deadlines, state licensing, and absentee voting.

Practicing attorneys will note Section 22 of HB 197 enacting temporary changes tolling statutes of limitations (emphasis added):

While this legislation provides tolling provisions, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor issued an Order on March 27, 2020, indicating that notwithstanding the tolling requirements imposed by the order, the Court, local court… as applicable may still require filing in accordance with existing rules and issue orders setting a specific schedule in a case.

For further guidance, The Supreme Court of Ohio issued COVID-19 Guidelines, Tolling Order – Frequently Asked Questions. The Guidelines emphasized the Order issued by the Ohio Supreme Court does not close the courts and addressed issues related to the tolling order in Q & A format.

Q: WHAT DOES “TOLL” MEAN/WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF TOLLING? A: Tolling serves to effectively freeze time from the date the tolling begins, which is March 9, 2020, until the expiration of the order. For example, if a deadline was set to expire on March 19, 2020 (10 days after the effective date of the order), the deadline will now expire 10 days after this tolling order is lifted.

If possible, lawyers should still file cases and meet current deadlines. If it is not possible to do so, the tolling provision affords additional time. E-filing may still allow cases to proceed. Check your Local Rules of Court for additional information.

Ohio is not a unified court system. Judges must still decide the best course of action for their own court and dockets. Please continue to check the OSBA COVID-19 Resource Directory and Ohio Courts directory for additional updates from courts.