Plusquellic conference

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic at a press conference Dec. 10, 2014.

(John Harper/Northeast Ohio Media Group)

AKRON, Ohio -- In a public letter Friday, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic asked federal court Judge John Adams to recuse himself from all cases involving the city.

Plusquellic argued that Adams has demonstrated a bias against the city and the mayor, and that bias has influenced the outcome of key court decisions, including a firefighter discrimination suit and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's $1.4 billion consent decree order.

Judicial experts said the mayor's letter was outside the normal scope of court conduct.

"That's not normally how it gets done," said Jonathan Coughlan, a professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law who sat on the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board for 15 years. "I've never seen anything like it ... that's not how you ask a judge to recuse."

Judges normally recuse themselves on a case-by-case basis, Coughlan said, and a request for recusal would be filed as a motion in court. The mayor is typically not considered a party to a lawsuit involving the city, Coughlan said, and therefore would not have standing to make such a motion.

Jonathan Little, court clerk for Adams, said the court would not consider the letter an official legal motion.

"We get letters from litigants who might be upset in a case," Little said. "This is the first time I have ever seen one published in a newspaper."

A long history

The mayor's complaints against the judge go back two decades, to when Adams was a judge at the Summit County Court of Common Pleas.

"During a meeting in your office, while you were Common Pleas Judge, you tried to persuade a top law enforcement official to go after me and my wife because you thought I influenced someone to give my wife a job at the Oriana House," Plusquellic wrote.

Strife between the mayor and judge continued during a proposal to build a parking deck near the federal courthouse in Akron.

"You were clearly outside of normal judicial conduct when you approached the Akron Bar Association on at least two occasions to badger local attorneys to try and stop the parking deck..." Plusquellic wrote.

Adams opposed the parking deck publicly and had raised concerns about the safety of building a parking garage next to the federal courthouse.

Costly decisions

Adams has presided over two notable cases that have proven very costly for the city. The first was a lawsuit filed in 2006 by a group of Akron firefighters who claimed that the city's public service exam was discriminatory, and did not reflect the skill or capability of the firefighters that were being promoted.

The city lost that case during a jury trial in 2008, and has not yet prepared a test to promote firefighters while it has awaited several rounds of appeals.

The mayor blamed the judge for the jury's decision in this case.

"Your actions on the bench led the jury to find against the City of Akron. Attorneys described your demeanor as 'searing judicial temperament against the City.' You continuously used inflections in your voice and negative facial expressions to portray to the jury your obvious disdain for the City as we defensed against the Plaintiffs' unwarranted claims," Plusquellic wrote.

The second case Adams oversaw was the EPA lawsuit, which resulted in a $1.4 billion consent decree forcing the city to stop nearly all sewer overflows into the Cuyahoga River.

While the consent decree is similar to those enacted in other U.S. cities, including Indianapolis and Baltimore, Plusquellic has argued that it is harsher.

In a ruling on the consent decree, Adams' court criticized Plusquellic's affidavit.

"The document is rife with hearsay, unsupported factual allegations, and expert opinions well outside of the knowledge and expertise of affiant," the court wrote.

Plusquellic complained about the ruling in his letter Friday.

"You attacked my affidavit on the record that the "tenor" of my "declaration ... demonstrates how unlikely it will be that an agreement will ever be reached." This is evidence of your negative bias against me, and also demonstrates that you were absolutely wrong.

The city has since had to raise sewer rates 69 percent to cover the cost of the sewer work.