Select Cases & Results
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio
In this § 1983 case, Tommy Meadows alleged that he had been brutally abused by corrections officers while an inmate at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Mr. Meadows brought claims against multiple corrections officers, including Eighth Amendment cruel-and-unusual-punishment claims against one officer who slammed Mr. Meadows’s head into a concrete wall and floor and against another who repeatedly blasted him with OC spray after he was handcuffed, shackled, bloodied, and placed in a “strip cell.” Mr. Meadows also brought a First…
Continue ReadingU.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio
This post-conviction case involved a request under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 for relief from judgment and sentence after judgment and sentence had already been affirmed on direct appeal. Section 2255 functions much like the writ of habeas corpus, though it applies only to those convicted in federal court. Emmett’s clients were two pharmacists who also owned a medical clinic. They were convicted at trial of three counts of health-care fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit health-care fraud. The government…
Continue ReadingUnited States Supreme Court
Emmett was retained by The Babylon Bee, the world’s largest satirical news site, to write an amicus brief on its behalf for submission to the United States Supreme Court in this case. The case concerns Anthony Novak, a resident of Parma, Ohio, wrongly prosecuted for creating a Facebook parody page mocking the Parma Police Department. At issue is whether the doctrine of qualified immunity bars Mr. Novak from suing Parma and the police officers who arrested and jailed him. The…
Continue ReadingSupreme Court of Ohio
This precedent-setting mandamus case was a major victory for press freedom and public access to government records. Emmett represented Scioto Valley Guardian editor-in-chief Derek Myers, who asked the Ohio Supreme Court to compel the City of Chillicothe, Ohio and its police chief, Ron Meyers, to turn over copies of police incident reports that the City had withheld. Emmett argued that the City was required to turn over the withheld reports under Ohio’s Public Records Act. The City had provided Mr….
Continue ReadingU.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota
Emmett’s client, Architectural Busstrut Corporation, is a premier supplier of commercial lighting systems. Busstrut had a contract with Target to supply its system for installation in hundreds of Target stores nationwide. Target jilted Busstrut for another supplier, and Busstrut filed suit in Minnesota federal court. Busstrut retained Kirkland & Ellis, a top-ranked national firm boasting over 2,700 attorneys. Unhappy with the representation, Busstrut terminated Kirkland and hired Robinson Law Firm to lead the charge in drafting Busstrut’s opposition to Target’s…
Continue ReadingSupreme Court of Ohio
Emmett was retained to present oral argument in this Ohio Supreme Court appeal on behalf of the plaintiff, who sought to hold caseworkers from the Hamilton County, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services accountable after her granddaughter was murdered. Because the caseworkers were government employees, they were entitled to certain protections from liability under a statute providing for government-employee immunity in many circumstances. The Ohio First District Court of Appeals had previously ruled against Emmett’s client, but the Ohio…
Continue ReadingSelect Additional Experience
- Represented an affiliate of a top-20 national bank in actions brought against the affiliate by a state worker’s compensation board. Emmett drafted the motion to dismiss in the first-filed case which induced the worker’s compensation board to settle on terms favorable to Emmett’s client.
- Represented a top-five national bank in a series of cases stemming from the 2008 financial crisis.
- Won dismissal of a securities class-action against a major manufacturing corporation and its CEO and CFO. The case arose from an accounting restatement that had caused the company’s stock price to drop dramatically. Emmett argued that the misconduct of a single low-level employee had necessitated the restatement and that the employee’s guilty state-of-mind—or scienter—should not be imputed to the company or its CEO and CFO. Emmett was the lead author of the successful briefs.
- Represented a client, convicted of murder in 1998, who sought exoneration based on the results of new DNA testing. The case involved multiple rounds of briefing before both the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court.
- Emmett defended a major health care provider in a qui tam action brought under the federal and Indiana False Claims Acts. The case, in which Emmett drafted numerous briefs, was resolved on terms favorable to the client.
- Secured complete forgiveness of hundreds of thousands of dollars in National Health Service Corps scholarship debt owed by client to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Client was granted the scholarship on the condition that he serve as an NHSC dentist for a set number of years but was unable to complete dental school due to a troubling health diagnosis.