By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief. Coleman is a legal journalist and an investigative reporter

Clevelandurbannews.com, CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo to cease exercising jurisdiction or authority over a dispute between the Association of Cleveland Fire Fighters Local 93 I.A.F.F and the city over the action of fire chief Angelo Calvillo in changing the reporting times of select firefighters from 8:30 am to to 7 am without negotiating the action under the collective bargaining agreement.

The city, which employs almost 8,100 regular full-time and part-time, approximately

900 seasonal employees, and a firefighters bargaining unit comprised of approximately 800 employees holding the ranks of firefighter through assistant chief, argued that the State Employment Relations Board (SERB) has sole jurisdiction over the dispute per state collective bargaining law and that the common pleas court cannot exercise jurisdiction unless an administrative appeal from an order by SERB is filed.

Attorneys for the city had argued that the union's beef that the matter was not negotiated is at best an unfair labor practice claim, which the union filed with SERB in January, a claim that is still pending.

The Ohio Supreme Court agreed.

Issued and signed by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican and the court's first female chief justice, the order against Russo, which is accompanied by a unanimous decision of the seven-member court, says in relevant part that "upon consideration thereof, it is ordered by the court that a peremptory writ of prohibition is granted and respondent is ordered to vacate the orders previously entered in Assn. of Cleveland Fire Fighters, Local 93 v. Cleveland, Cuyahoga C.P. No. CV-l9-910679 and cease exercising jurisdiction over that case, consistent with the opinion rendered herein."

A Lyndhurst, Ohio native and former lieutenant governor, O'Connor's order for the seasoned judge of 22 years to vacate all prior orders in the case includes a temporary restraining order by Russo that prevented the city from implementing the work time changes slated to originally take effect Feb. 11, 2019.

Sources say that Russo is a seasoned judge who allegedly knew she had no authority or jurisdiction to hear the dispute in place of SERB but believes she is above the law.

Her behavior, sources say, and research reveals, is routine, and is indicative of the arrogance in general of Russo and several of the other 33 largely White judges on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas general division bench that serves greater Cleveland and has jurisdiction to hear felony cases, lawsuits with damages sought in excess of $15,000, and a host of other legal matters.

The common pleas and municipal court judges of Cuyahoga County, inclusive of Judge Russo, often mistreat Black and other people who come before them in criminal and civil cases, and otherwise, and they do as they please, data show, the law and other authorities be damned.

This includes, depending on the judge, unfair and illegal case rulings in criminal and civil cases, indictment fixing and grand jury tampering, malicious prosecutions, excessive sentences, falsification of the case record, case fixing, gross theft of homes of Cuyahoga County residents, illegal capius orders and false arrests, and the denial of qualified attorneys to poor and indigent Black people in serious felony cases.

In addition to seeking the temporary restraining order the trial court complaint before Russo also seeks a declaratory judgment, preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction.

The restraining order is, no doubt, now null and void, per the Supreme Court's ruling. .

The firefighters union, which filed the complaint before Russo, is led by its president, Francis Lally, and the city are parties to a collective bargaining agreement which was to expire on March 31, 2019.

A Democrat, Russo had said at a pretrial hearing that if the city's attorneys did not like her decision to hear the case in place of SERB to "file a writ."

They did just that before the Ohio Supreme Court and won this week, the official filing being a petition for a writ of prohibition that requested that the Ohio Supreme Court preclude Russo from hearing the case, a petition or compliant that was, in fact, granted.

The judge was represented in the Ohio Supreme Court matter by the office of County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley, since Ohio common judges, per state law, are represented in such proceedings, whether a writ or an pretrial appeal, by associated county prosecutors, and regardless of any perceived conflict of interest.

Hence, the county prosecutor's office prosecutes defendants, a disproportionate number of whom are Black, and the judges that preside over their cases are represented by such prosecutors if they are sued by such defendants at the pretrial stages of the cases.

The vast majority of the city’s firefighters are assigned to 24-hour shifts where their schedules generally entail one day worked followed by two days off.

These fire suppression personnel start their shifts at 8:30 a.m.and end their shifts at

8:30 a.m. the following day.

The slated change in reporting to work from 8:30 am to 7 am, determined by management in isolation of union input, is absurd, and illegal under collective bargaining law, says the union and its attorneys.

But Chief Calvillo, based on what he claims is a professed goal to enhance safety and to provide services in a more efficient and cost-effective manner, decided to independently change the starting times of its fire-suppression personnel from 8:30 a.m. to 7 a.m, such that the employees would start their shifts at 7 a.m. and end their shift at 7 a.m. the following day.

Whether SERB will find the city committed an unfair labor practice now that the state's high court has said that SERB, and not Judge Russo, must initially decide the controversy, remains to be seen.