The Pattakos Law Firm LLC

10/23/2026

A January headline at Cleveland dot com asked; “Can [Case Western Reserve] University avoid liability for spray-painted protesters?”

The Eighth District Court of Appeals in Cuyahoga County has answered that question in the negative, ruling against CWRU’s appeal in our lawsuit on behalf of campus protesters who were retaliated against by University President Eric Kaler and University Police for their expression of support for Palestinian civilians facing mass murder, brutal violence, and displacement as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza.

CWRU officials maintained that their police officers were entitled to immunity against the protester’s claims for assault under Ohio’s Political Subdivision Tort Liability Act (Ohio Revised Code Chapter 2744), despite their inability to point to any case where a private university’s police force was held to be entitled to such protection, and despite sound Ohio precedent holding that “public control of the entity … is central to the determination that the entity is a component of government and entitled to sovereign immunity.”

While the three judge panel was split on the immunity question—with one judge ruling that the question was not properly before the Court—all three appellate judges agreed that the trial court properly denied CWRU’s motion to dismiss, because even if CWRU was entitled to immunity under R.C. 2744, the statute does not protect against conduct “exercised with malicious purpose, in bad faith, or in a wanton or reckless manner,” it remains for the jury to decide whether Defendants’ conduct meets that standard.

The shocking actions by CWRU officials in ordering contractors to spray paint over protesters who were standing in front of a pro-Palestine mural made national news, and was one of the more chilling manifestations of a national crackdown against free speech on college campuses as students rallied to support the Palestinian cause against Israel's mass slaughter and displacement of civilians in Gaza after October 7. Robust protest activity on college campuses and robust criticism of needless violence and destruction caused by U.S.-backed military operations are hallmarks of U.S. democracy and values. The systemic institutional retaliation these campus protesters have faced violates the most fundamental principles on which this nation is founded, including the right to be free from excessive and punitive actions by those who wield state power. This includes privately controlled police forces who are given limited authority to exercise such power, and who in this case clearly exceeded that authority. We remain grateful to have access to our courts to remedy abuses like the one suffered by our clients here.

For more information about this case, including a link to the Eighth District's opinion, see the link in the comments and, as always, stay tuned to this page for further updates.

09/16/2026

About 10 years ago I called the office of legendary Sandusky attorney Geoffrey Oglesby to see about getting my hands on a copy of a court order that was referenced in a Sandusky Register article but wasn't available on the docket. When I was connected with Attorney Oglesby he laughed and told me that he called the Register "the Ragster" and we had a nice little chat that I've come to appreciate a lot more after Oglesby's passing and learning more about his legacy. And more so this morning taking in the vigorous public reaction to the Register's post below about Ashli Ford's conviction being overturned on appeal; which speaks volumes about a growing public awareness of how the collapse of meaningful journalism has led to an increasing lack of accountability for public officials who abuse their power, as is amply and unfortunately demonstrated by Ashli's story.

All of which is especially salient here given the Register's utter failure to provide meaningful coverage to these cases, let alone to use its editorial voice to condemn the serial abuses of various public offices that have characterized these proceedings. As with several of our cases in recent years, the mainstream news reporting (here, the Register's) might as well have been written from another planet from what was actually happening in the courtroom, and a reasonable person actually informed about the case would have to wonder if the newspaper was intentionally trying to mislead the public about what was at issue. This increasingly worsening crisis will not be fixed until enough people organize to insist on it, but clear decisions like the one issued by the Sixth District yesterday affirming the basic rights this nation was founded on, and the vigorous public reaction reflected below show that the raw materials are still there, which is at least good reason for hope.

In the meantime folks should continue to foster awareness that if you want the truth on meaningful issues you are very likely not going to get it from mainstream corporate sources and should cultivate your information sources and networks accordingly, including, of course, by keeping an eye on this page.

PS: Note how the Register's report on yesterday's ruling states that "The appeals court judges *argued* that Ford was using protected First Amendment speech when she stated that she would es**rt Norwalk city officials 'to (their) demise in a manner more akin to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King Jr.'"

This is an especially funny turn of phrase because courts don't "argue." They issue rulings. And the Sixth District's ruling here is not only the law now, but one most clear and decisive pronouncements of our right to be free from being prosecuted for "speech crimes" as we've seen published by an Ohio court in awhile — something that any true journalist or journalistic outlet would be celebrating.

- Attorney Peter Pattakos

Local podcaster Ashli Ford is no longer a convicted felon.

On Tuesday, the Sixth District Court of Appeals announced it accepted the appeal from Ford, 41, of Milan, and reversed her convictions on felony intimidation charges: https://tinyurl.com/2p9wxsu7

09/15/2026

We’re extremely gratified to report that one of the worst and most threatening miscarriages of justice in recent Ohio history — prominent victim’s advocate and podcaster Ashli Ford's conviction on four felony “intimidation” charges in Erie County, over a single Facebook post in which she did no more than issue sharp political criticism of certain City of Norwalk public officials — has been decisively reversed and vacated by an excellent decision from a unanimous panel of Ohio’s Sixth District Court of Appeals. The 21-page opinion is a ringing endorsement of our most fundamental freedoms as Americans at a moment when, as shown by the mere fact of this prosecution, those freedoms are under unprecedented threat.

In three separate cases over the last two years, prosecutors in the Huron-Ottawa-Erie tri-county area have tried to pin a total of 34 charges on Ms. Ford in three separate trials, two before a jury and one before a judge. Thanks to today’s decision they are now 0 for 33 on these charges.

Key excerpts from the opinion are included here, including the Court’s affirmation that “speech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” Also noteworthy is the way the Court distanced itself from a stain on this State's precedents represented by an opinion in which the 8th District affirmed a rather obviously unconstitutional criminal conviction of Attorney Elsebeth Baumgartner for similar (and similarly protected) political speech.

Of course we’ll have more to say about this story as these cases reach a final conclusion, which by all rights should end with a substantial payment from Erie County’s insurer to Ms. Ford for the unconstitutional nightmare they’ve put her through, but for now we’re just glad to celebrate with Ashli and her many supporters across this state, including those who might not agree with her opinions or even approve of her work, but who recognize, to borrow a phrase “more akin to [one spoken by] Martin Luther King than Malcolm X,” that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. God bless America and Ohio’s Sixth District Court of Appeals.

08/14/2026

One year ago this week we celebrated the vindication of the best of America and American values at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse with the complete acquittal of the New Era Defendants Antoine Tolbert, Austreeia Everson, and Rameer Askew after an extraordinarily grueling five-week-long jury trial wherein we, our clients, and many observers (including at least about half of the jurors, who reached out to us after the case to discuss it) felt as if we went all the way through the looking glass and, thankfully, back.

Most Americans don’t appreciate enough that we live in the home of the jury trial (as Judge Vodrey described it to the jury in this case), with roughly 90% of the world’s jury trials happening here, with the right to trial by one’s peers being one of the foremost reasons the founders of this nation broke from the crown. There’s also no other nation that (at least ostensibly) protects its citizens’ right to free speech and expression than ours does, by way of the First Amendment.

The story of the New Era trial should help most anyone better appreciate these rights, as this vindication wouldn’t have been necessary but for Justin Bibb’s Cleveland Police Department and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office grievously abusing their powers to an extent that might have made King George himself blush: Public officials who dragged our clients and 14 jurors through a five week trial because they wanted to send these three community servants and heroes (including both of a four-year-old’s parents) to prison for years for the “high crimes” of (A) hurting the feelings of a few gas station owners on Cleveland’s east side with a boycott that cost these business owners at most between five and ten thousand dollars, and (B) successfully intervening in a small-time drug dealer’s efforts to sell w**d to a 13-year old that resulted in the police impounding the drug dealer’s car, phone, w**d, and scale, and shaking Tolbert’s and Askew’s hands for the work they do. For this the New Era Defendants were charged with multiple felony counts of extortion, F1 aggravated robbery and kidnapping, and aggravated rioting, among fifteen charges in total, most with gun specifications that would have carried years of jail time with a conviction on any of the counts.

In the end it was obvious to any honest person with half a brain who observed these proceedings that the New Era Defendants were targeted not because they’d committed any crimes -- let alone felonies warranting lengthy prison sentences -- but because of who they are: Which we would describe as people who refuse to accept the way the “powers that be” are apparently so committed to preserving the status quo that they require access to a permanent underclass that’s trapped in the Prison Industrial Complex: cycles of poverty, illness, crime, and dead end jobs, neighborhoods that are intentionally deprived of services to maintain this status quo, and the predictable revenue streams that come with it.

More specifically, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the New Era Defendants were selected as targets by (or for) police and prosecutors precisely because they’d proven their commitment to doing the hard work of even partially interrupting the cycles that have afflicted Cleveland’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken neighborhoods, including by exercising their First Amendment rights to boycott business owners who prey on these neighborhoods, and their Second Amendment rights to engage in armed safety patrols and community engagement walks where the police do not (as much as many police officers would be glad to if they were properly supported).

These Defendants were model citizens with no criminal history, who’d never fired their guns at anyone (which didn’t stop the prosecutors from wheeling those guns into the courtroom every day and placing them on their trial table as if to scare the jurors into convicting), and who’d received hundreds of thousands in grant funding from local foundations and even the City of Cleveland itself, which was, as foundation and city leaders testified at this trial, based on feedback from people who live in the communities that New Era serves. Mr. Askew, when this case was tried last summer, was a 19-year-old honors student at Cleveland State University, the president of his graduating class at Ginn Academy, and member of Glenville’s 2023 State Championship football team who, because of this trial, had to miss a retreat in Florida that he was scheduled to attend due to his national leadership position with his fraternity.

The relief that we felt after hearing the jury say “Not Guilty” fifteen times was immense and indescribable. At least some of this can be conveyed through the photos taken by trial observer Ruby Darwish that are shared with this post, which I hope also help convey the urgency of what’s happening in the neighborhoods New Era serves; and relatedly with the deterioration of our democracy and its institutions as we’ve steadily allowed the dollar to replace the vote as our fundamental unit of governance, which created the conditions for these farcical charges to have been brought against the New Era three in the first place.

Much more has been, can be, and will be said about this case and the players involved, including by a documentary that’s being made about it by some talented filmmakers, but for now in commemorating this anniversary I want to tell a short story that even most close observers of these proceedings have never heard.

The celebration you see in these photos, which started in the courtroom, continued outside of the courthouse (as several of the jurors came out to congratulate our clients and express their shock at how this trial unfolded), and then at our firm’s offices, included an impromptu speech I gave at the office in which I took issue with the preposterous nature of the Assistant Prosecutor’s closing argument wherein she tried to convince the jury that as much as we were referring to the prosecution’s abuse of “the people’s” rights throughout our defense of this case, that it was actually the prosecution who represented “the people.” It was a raucous speech, delivered in a private, informal, and extraordinarily joyful environment, so imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to see that Mr. Tolbert had posted it to his page. While I couldn’t blame him in the moment, I immediately called him and asked that he take it down, which he immediately did, and to my knowledge the video had never been published or shared again. At least not until O’Malley’s office, who’d apparently captured a copy of the video during the limited time in which it was posted to Tolbert’s page, and sent it to the office of Ohio’s Disciplinary Counsel along with a lengthy and rambling complaint in which he argued that, for various reasons related to my firm’s handling of the Tolbert trial, including this victory speech, that my law license should face professional discipline.

At first I was upset with Tolbert that he’d shared a video of this intimate moment, and that I had to defend it in a response to Disciplinary Counsel’s inquiry (which ultimately resulted in O’Malley’s complaint being dismissed without any further action). But I've come around to being glad that O’Malley and his assistants got to have this intimate window into just how joyful the celebration was of his Office’s failures with this case. While police and prosecutors are surely like anything else in that there are good ones and bad ones, and even the good ones might make bad mistakes from time to time, for how many times police and prosecutors destroy lives with their wrongful conduct without giving their victims a second thought, it seems clear that what the Prosecutors were really so mad at us about was the way we held a mirror up to them and forced them to think about what they were doing with this case and to our clients. Ultimately it was their own reflection that upset them the most, which is very understandable here and gives reason for hope that they’ll continue to reflect on these events and how they might do better next time. If anyone should be reflecting on their actions it’s public officials who are entrusted to wield state power to decide who gets charged and tried as criminals in our court system, and who have near absolute immunity from lawsuits against their actions.

Anyway, this anniversary and New Era’s work and story are too momentous not to celebrate here today. Also a great reminder to all of the importance of jury duty! TGIF and as always stay tuned to this page for further updates on this story and others.

- Peter Pattakos

08/11/2026

Today, The American Prospect published an excellent and much needed report by Maureen Tkacik on our case for Westlake Doctor Feras Hamdan, who was victimized last year by absurd false accusations of an “antisemitic road rage” incident by Congressman Max Miller that led to life destroying felony charges and a global media firestorm. This was before Miller’s facially dubious lies were exposed by objective evidence, including data from Hamdan’s Tesla showing that his windows were closed at the time Miller falsely accused him of shouting anti-Semitic threats and throwing a Palestinian flag at Miller out of the window.

This report also goes into some detail on how Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley, after his office’s prosecution of Hamdan had concluded with pleas to minor misdemeanors unrelated to Miller’s lies, in what Miller’s lawyers complained was “the deal of the century,” handed over all the data from Hamdan’s cell phone to Miller’s lawyers in response to a public records request. This was private Fourth Amendment-protected information that the prosecutors only had access to in the first place due to a warrant issued for the limited purpose of allowing Miller’s false accusations to be investigated. O’Malley’s office nevertheless handed this data over as if it were Halloween candy, despite that, according to our research, no court in this state or nation has ever held that such data, having never been used as evidence in a criminal trial, was “public record.” As an aside, all Cuyahoga County citizens should be aware that your elected Prosecutor believes that all the data inside of your phone is fair game for the public as long as they can find any excuse, no matter how flimsy or absurd, to charge you with a crime. And all Ohio and U.S. citizens should also be concerned by the precedent that the busiest prosecutor’s office in this state apparently wishes to set here.

On the whole, this report offers a compelling picture of just how broken America’s political institutions are today in several different respects: The fact that such an unworthy candidate could become elected as a U.S. Congressman in the first place; that he could take our justice system for such a ride, destroying a model citizen’s life with such transparently dubious and politically motivated accusations, and with the enthusiastic participation of public officials and ostensible journalists who are supposed to be the guardians of justice; and that false accusations of “antisemitism” are so easily weaponized toward such ends.

It’s hard to think of a more compelling real-world microcosm of our times: A young doctor and father of four who, like many others in the community of Palestinian/Arab-Americans on Cleveland’s West Side in this ostensible melting pot and “free country,” is horrified that their ostensible “representative” in the U.S. Senate is not only so unqualified for his office, but routinely makes vile statements wishing death and destruction on the innocent people residing in their homeland (including Hamdan’s own grandmother). Our increasingly corporate-captured and deteriorating democratic institutions allow for near zero accountability for this ostensible “representative” to his constituents, so it’s an especially ripe moment when Hamdan happens to see the Congressman driving next to him on the highway. The doctor then understandably and admirably takes the rare opportunity to meaningfully express his dissent by pulling an image of the Palestine flag up on his phone, and pressing it up against his closed car window while mouthing the words “Let Gaza live.” For this grave sin, the doctor’s office is swarmed by police officers hours later, after the Congressman broadcasts his pathetically opportunistic lies to the world; and the doctor spends the next four nights in jail before posting a non-refundable $50,000 so that he can be allowed to go home to his family under the conditions of the absurd $500,000 bond set by a Rocky River Municipal Court judge, only to then lose his job and face felony charges, medical board inquiries, and the aforementioned global media firestorm from there.

Needless to say it’s a relief to see some actual journalism done on this case, with this being the first meaningful report on this story by any national or local outlet, which of course also speaks volumes about the decline of our Fourth Estate.

And in the end another powerful reminder that if we want freedom we have to fight for it. Again we're proud to be in the fight with Dr. Hamdan and our co-counsel Issa Elkhatib and The Elkhatib Law Office here. Please join us in praying for and demanding justice for Dr. Hamdan, and thanks as always for reading and supporting this page and our firm.

08/03/2026

The Erie County Prosecutor’s mouthpiece at the “StayTunedSandusky” Substack blog has posted about our client Ashli Ford (and us) twelve times over the last twelve days, which is consistent with the roughly 180 posts this blogger has made about Ms. Ford since his blog was founded about a year ago. The titles of these posts are pictured here and you can read the posts for yourself at the blog or the "StayTunedSandusky" page, which might cause you to ask yourself what it means when an ostensible “journalist” does literal “Empire Strikes Back” fan-fiction not only for a prosecutor’s office, but more specifically for that prosecutor’s office’s efforts to pin felony convictions on a prominent victim’s advocate and citizen-journalist for the grievous crimes of publishing critical Facebook posts about local public officials, and attempting to navigate her way through Covid-era red tape to remove her ex-husband from a mortgage that he admittedly wanted to be removed from, with no cost to him.

To put it another way, not only do we have a journalist foaming at the mouth against us and our client in such an extraordinary way, but he’s doing this on behalf the Erie County Prosecutor’s pursuit of felony charges against our client in two cases where no real crimes are at issue, and where no tangible harm resulted to anyone as a result of the criminal conduct alleged. To call this extraordinary is an understatement.

We encourage everyone to look at the facts for themselves, comparing our filings linked and discussed in the posts below to the Prosecutor’s response (which we’ll post in the comments here) that fails to meaningfully address the substance of our well-supported allegations of jury tampering and improper ex-parte communications between the Prosecutors and the Judge.

Two out of the three Erie County Judges – Judge Binette and Judge Tone – have already advised the Chief Justice that they do not oppose our request for disqualification from these two cases involving Ms. Ford. We’ll have more to say about this case, and the substance of the Prosecutor’s response, once Judge McGookey completes her response.

07/23/2026

We're about to go live with Ashli Ford to talk about her case in Erie County, as well as the justice system, journalism, and civilization more broadly. Tune in by clicking this link:

https://www.facebook.com/share/1GDtod1yvD/

07/23/2026

Earlier this week we filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against the City of Cleveland and its detective Timothy Hannon who directed the shockingly baseless and retaliatory prosecution of New Era Cleveland leaders Antoine Tolbert, Austreeia Everson, and Rameer Askew that ended with a decisive acquittal after a five-week jury trial last summer. At least five of the twelve jurors have contacted us since the trial ended to express their own shock and disappointment as to the Cleveland Police’s and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s actions against our clients.

We’ve written extensively about this case at this page and at our firm’s website, and this week’s complaint also lays out the shocking developments of this case in great detail. We’d encourage anyone who cares about our most basic civil rights as Americans to review these details, and to also take note of the fact that Cleveland dot com, ostensibly Ohio’s leading news outlet, has not covered the filing of this lawsuit even though we’ve been in contact with their reporters about it since Tuesday. This, despite the fact that they ran at least ten stories about the indictment and criminal proceedings against our clients; though in reading Cleveland dot com’s reports about this case, and comparing them to the actual record, it was as if these “news” reports were written from another planet. The obvious inference to be drawn from these developments (among many others) is that the oligarchs who own Cleveland dot com are more committed to the police state’s maintenance and arrogation of power over ordinary citizens than they are to the most basic ideals of journalism and democracy, a matter that warrants the public’s critical attention as well. We do appreciate the commitment of Ideastream’s Matt Richmond to producing meaningful journalism about this case, which has been exceptional in today’s media landscape.

Suffice to say we’re looking forward to Mr. Tolbert, Ms. Everson, and Mr. Askew having own day in Court to remedy the harm that was caused to them by these egregious violations of their civil rights, and our proud to fight for them to ensure that justice is done here. If the police don’t face accountability for what they did to Tolbert and his colleagues here, it means that everyone’s basic rights are at serious risk.

Thanks as always for supporting this page and our firm, and stay tuned here for further updates.

07/21/2026

We have another important update on our request pending before the Supreme Court of Ohio that the Erie County General Division judges be disqualified from presiding over either of the Erie County Prosecutor’s two pending criminal prosecutions against our client Ashli Ford.

Two weeks ago we filed our initial Affidavit of Disqualification against these judges that was based primarily on (1) an obviously unlawful order by Judge Tyghe Tone purporting to revoke the Chief Justice’s appointment of a visiting retired judge and transferring that case to Judge Beverly McGookey (wherein Ford’s conviction on four felony counts for a First-Amendment-protected Facebook post criticizing public officials of the City of Norwalk is currently under appeal); and (2) evidence of jury tampering by the office of Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter, with an apparent assist from Judge McGookey, by seeking to dismiss one of the jurors on the last day of the recent trial of retaliatory “forgery” charges against Ford (which ended with a deadlocked jury), because the prosecutors knew that this juror viewed their case unfavorably, seemingly in part because they reviewed his trial notebook in which he recorded his impressions of the evidence presented during the trial.

Today we made supplementary filings in the Supreme Court of Ohio to support our request for disqualification of these judges from both cases based on new information, including an affidavit from another juror in the forgery case who contacted us last week, and courthouse surveillance footage that we obtained by a public records request.

The surveillance footage shows the prosecution’s team having an extended conversation with Judge McGookey in the courtroom after the second-to-last day of the trial, after the defense team had left, with Baxter gesturing toward the jury box, and the prosecutors huddling closely with the Judge at her bench as if they did not want others to hear their conversation, which continued in the hallway as the prosecutors were in the elevator. This was the evening before the Judge immediately granted the prosecutor’s extraordinary and extraordinarily baseless request to excuse the note-taking juror first thing the next morning. The surveillance footage also shows the Judge’s staff members bringing the juror notebooks between the jury room and the Judge’s chambers every day; and it also pictures one of the assistant prosecutors, Paulette Lilly, walking with her hand affectionately placed on the Judge’s back, as the two walked into the Judge’s chambers together on the second day of the trial, where Lilly remained for about five minutes. It may be readily inferred from this video that the Judge was routinely engaged in improper ex parte communications with the prosecution about the case that would require her disqualification even apart from the apparent jury tampering.

The additional juror has relatedly affirmed that both Judge McGookey and Prosecutor Baxter made biased remarks to the jurors after they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case, both expressing their apparent disappointment that the jury did not convict Ford. This juror also confirmed the note-taking juror’s account that he was paying attention to the proceedings, taking copious notes, and should not have been disqualified from deciding the case.

Excerpts from these filings are included with this post with a link to the filed documents in the comments here. We’re going live on Ms. Ford’s podcast to discuss this case and its broader implications on Thursday at 5PM, with details for tuning to be posted in the comments here as well. Finally, as always, thanks for your support of our firm and its mission and stay tuned to this page for further updates.