Biographical Information

Michel A. O’Hara understands the importance of his availability to his clients. Once a client hires Mr. O’Hara’s firm, the goal of the firm is to highly responsive to the needs of every client. Highly responsive includes the goal to return each telephone call within two hours. Many other attorneys believe if they can accomplish this within two days they are doing well. This singular factor distinguishes Mr. O’Hara from the vast majority of other attorneys.

Being highly responsive cultivates good relationships not only with clients, but with courts and other professionals, both within, and beyond the legal field. These practices together with uncompromising ethics, and professional competence have produced outstanding results for Mr. O’Hara’s clients since 1994.

Admission Dates & Jurisdictions

1994 – Admitted to Practice Law before every Court in the Commonwealth of Kentucky

1994 – Admitted to Practice in Federal Court

1997 – Admitted to Practice in Ohio

2002 – Admitted to Practice in the Federal Court of Claims

Education

2000 – Certified as a Mediator by the Mediation Center of Kentucky

1993 Earned a Juris Doctorate Degree in Law from Salmon P. Chase College of Law

1989 Earned a Bachelor of Arts Degrees in History and Psychology from Thomas More College

1985 Graduated Covington Latin School

Honors & Awards

Six Lawyers Honored For Work With Children

Boone County lawyer Mike Mason knew he wanted to help schools cut down on truancy when he volunteered for a new program last year.

What he didn’t know was how much he would get from the experience.

I didn’t anticipate developing a rapport with these kids,” Mason said. “I never knew that they would look up to me as a friend and a mentor.”

Mason is one of six lawyers who will receive an award next month from Kentucky Child Now! given to individuals who have made a positive impact on children and youth in Kentucky. The lawyers will be recognized for their volunteer efforts with the Attendance Intervention and Mediation (AIM) Program, which targets truancy in Boone County Schools.

The program at R.A. Jones Middle School started during the 2003-2004 school year and expanded to three additional schools this year.

Modeled after truancy court in Louisville, the program solicits lawyers to work with students who have escalating attendance problems. The lawyers review teacher reports and confer with a social worker to help the students and their parents deal with truancy issues

Other lawyers who volunteered in the program and Roger Braden, Joanne Grogan, Larry Hicks, Mike McMain and Michael A. O’Hara.

In addition to R.A. Jones in Florence, the program operated out of Ockerman and Florence elementary schools, both in Florence, for the entire school year, and at Conner middle School in Hebron for one semester.

At Ockerman, Mason was one of two lawyers who attended weekly sessions checking students’ attendance and their work.

“Our group was geared to giving these kids some of the attention they needed,” Mason said.

In many cases, that extra attention was what was needed to get the students back on track.

Boone County social worker Staci Alder also works with coordinators at schools’ family resource centers to assist families and with a therapist from the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky to provide in-home counseling.

This program is funded by the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice through Boone County’s Department of Human Services.

June, 15, 2005, The Kentucky Post, Reporter, Crystal Harden.

Press

BOONE COUNTY INMATE SUES COUNTY OVER MEDICAL TREATMENT

Channel 12, Reporter Jeff Hirsh, August 22, 2011

A former inmate in the Boone County Jail files suit against the jail. The lawsuit claims improper medical treatment meant she needed life-altering surgery. The county denies any wrong-doing in a story you’ll see only on Local 12. Reporter Jeff Hirsh looks at the charges and shows video from inside the jail.

Jennifer Huston was in the Boone County jail last August. The video was shot by a deputy also in medical distress. “I was in a lot of pain. At first, I thought it was cramps or a charley horse. But it was far worse. My foot started to be real cold and purple.”

There was a blood clot in Jennifer’s leg. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital for surgery where she stayed for 13 days stay and created a huge bill. Now, Huston is suing Boone County and the county’s jail medical contractor for “unconstitutionally inhumane treatment, medical negligence, and deliberately disregarding Jennifer’s need for proper medication.”

“We contend that they knew she needed a blood thinner, in this case Coumadin or Wafarin. They didn’t give it to her for a week. She was prescribed to have one 5 mg. pill a day, which she had on her when she was taken to jail,” says Huston’s lawyer.

Jennifer Huston was arrested last August outside a local store, in a case that would ultimately be pled down to criminal mischief. Unable to post bond, Huston was locked up in the Boone County Jail. For a week, until the blood clot led to hospitalization, Huston’s lawsuit not only claims the jail failed to give her proper meds, but says once she was hospitalized, the jail improperly released her from county custody to save money. Huston was released on her own recognizance. her lawyer explains, “When they release her they have, in effect, said that the jail is no longer financially responsible for her medical treatment the way they were beforehand.”

The suit claims cutting medical costs was so common at Boone County that it “became so reliable as to create a custom of depriving inmates of their right to proper medications.”

“They should have just given me my medication. I wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital with the blood clot.”

The lawyer handling the case for Boone County says it is normal for a judge, not the jail, to release an inmate on bond. If that inmate is hospitalized, the inmate then becomes responsible for medical expenses. However, attorney Jeff Mando says the county does not deprive inmates of medical care due to cost. Mando says, “Boone County did not disregard Ms. Huston’s medical needs when she was an inmate. Jail staff secured a medical history when he was booked in and medical staff with Southern Health Partners examined her the same day. While in custody, Ms. Huston, unlike most people, had direct access to medical care 24/7. She was seen regularly during her limited stay and trained medical personnel with SHP provided the treatment and medicine they deemed appropriate.”

Mando says the jailer and his dedicated staff will vigorously defend the baseless allegations in Huston’s lawsuit.

Ironically, none of this would have happened if Jennifer Huston was able to post bond after being arrested. That bond was $100. Outstanding medical bills of $100,000 dollars are at stake now. The question is-who will pay?

The lawsuit asks for medical expenses plus unspecified damages for pain and suffering, among other costs. A hearing for the Federal court case has not yet been scheduled.

END OF ARTICLE

LIABILITY FOR BITE ARGUED

BY Jim Hannah, The Kentucky Enquirer, February 18, 2012

So excited from watch “The Wizard of Oz” for the first time. Andrew Fuller grabbed a lion costume threw it on and ran out the front door on July 4 weekend 2009. Instead of finding courage so longed for by the lion in the movie, the active 7-year-old came face-to-face with a frightened dog, a 10-month-old boxer named Jo-Jo, who attacked him.

With scars on his scalp and a mangled ear, Andrew’s family now hopes to set a precedent in Kentucky courts so other dog-bite victims will not be left with bills. The family attorney, Michael A. O’Hara argued before the Kentucky Court of appeals on Thursday that the dog owner’s landlord should be held responsible for the attack.

“While legislators repeatedly draft unambiguous laws to include landlords, judges have repeatedly interpreted the plain language in esoteric ways to absolve landlords from liability,” O’Hara told a three judge panel of the appeals court.
He said it was an important issue because children are disproportionately more likely to be attached by dogs. If the dog’s owner is a renter with no renters insurance, there is often no one to pay the medical bills. Andrew’s family had health insurance but it will not cover plastic surgery.

An estimated 4.7 million god bites occur in the U.S. each year, according to the American Humane Association. Of those, 50 percent involved children under 12, and 65 percent of bites among children occur to the head and neck.
The landlord’s attorney, Barry Rudell II, argued that Andrew, now 10, made for sympathetic case but that the judges had to follow the law.

“This case reminds me of something … said in law school,” Rudell said. “Emotional cases still turn on evidence.’ That is what we have in this case. We have a young man, severely injured. Clearly damaged to no fault of his own.”
But Rudell said the court couldn’t find the landlord responsible, in part, because the attack didn’t even happen on the landlord’s property. Court records state the attachk happened on a sidewalk as Andrew walked down his street. The family lived in the 300 block of 13th Street in Newport. Andrew’s father, Bryan Fuller, first sued the landlord and dog owner in Campbell Circuit Court.

Judge Julie Reinhart Ward found the landlord, JoAnn Blair, who was represented by her insurer’s lawyers, not liable.
Ward instead issued a judgment of $80,000 against the dog owner, Catherine Black. Black didn’t have renter’s insurance, didn’t hire a lawyer and didn’t show up in court to defend herself. She now claims Blair told her she would take care of the litigation. Black, who couldn’t be reached for comment, is left to pay $78 per pay period toward the judgment. O’Hara said insurance companies are profiting by selling landlords insurance that covers dog bites and then successfully arguing in court that the landlords are not responsible for dog-bite claims. “Right now they have the best of both worlds,” O’Hara said.

The Fullers appealed Ward’s ruling that the landlord was not responsible. The appeals court is expected to issue its opinion in 30 to 45 days. Court of Appeals Judge Jeff Taylor said it appeared Ward struggled with trying to make the leap that a landlord could held responsible for a dog bite. O’Hara said the landlord knew a dog was being kept at the rental property. In the lease agreement between Black and Blair, Blair permitted the dog to reside at the home, and charged a different rental rate because of the boxer’s presence.

“Kentucky law does not limit the definition of a ‘dog owner’ only to those with a right property in the dog,” O’Hara said. “By virtue of Blair permitting this boxer to remain on the premise she owned, Blair is an ‘owner’ as defined by statute.”
O’Hara said ignoring the statute would invite everyone in Kentucky who wanted to avoid liability on dog attacks to not license the dog or license the dog in the name of the most judgment-proof member of the household, like a 6 year old child.

When a dog bites someone, the owner would simply disclaim it, thus allowing all the secondary party owners to escape all liability and leaving the victim with the entire burden of the injury, O’Hara said.

BY Jim Hannah, The Kentucky Enquirer, February 18, 2012

Landlords can be held liable in dog attacks

This story aired on Fox 19 news, July 17, 2012 on the 6:30 p.m. broadcast. This video is the property of Fox 19 news. The story was written by Gordon Graham, reporter at Fox 19 News.

It’s a question of liability.

Should landlords in Kentucky be responsible if their tenants’ dogs bit people? The state supreme court says yes.

The court issued its opinion following a lawsuit a Newport family. The family sued after their child, wearing a lion costume, was mauled by a boxer in July of 2009.

The court ruled the dog was too far from the rental property for the landlord to be liable in *that* case.

Supporters of this new law say it will help make the public safer.

Opponents say they know of no other cases where the landlord is treated as though he or she owns the tenant’s pet.

Charles Tassell with the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association, which represents about 1000 apartment owners in Northern Kentucky says the high court ruling has sent a chill through the ranks of their members. “The main reaction we’re getting from landlords at this point is quite frankly they’re saying we’re not going to allow dogs.”

Tassell also says the ruling goes too far. “Honestly I think this is an over reach in the sense that this is a precedent that favors trial attorneys rather than the public interest.”

In our commitment to balanced news FOX19 talked with Bryan Allen who sued the landlord and the dog’s owner. Allen says the ruling does serve the public interest. “We just want our neighborhoods protected and kids to be safe and to be able to run and play in costumes, you know, to do what they want and be able to enjoy themselves as children instead of being terrified by running….loose dogs and stuff.”

Allen’s attorney Michael O’Hara says the ruling is a good start, but doesn’t go far enough because landlord is only held liable when the dog is on the property. He also says landlords should worry about the public safety rather than the affect on their business. “It may be bad for business…sometimes safety is…and you need to make a conscious decision when you go into business what’s more important to you the almighty dollar or the safety of the people in your community.”

Because the dog attack occurred across the street from this property the landlord was found not liable, but Bryan Fuller says he wonders where you set boundaries on a loose dog.

Please note that Michael A. O’Hara that needs to clarify the following points in the above article:

The 7 year old boy who was attacked was named, Andrew Fuller. His father, Bryan Fuller, sued the tenant and the landlord for the injuries to his son. Michael A. O’Hara represents Andrew and his family in this action.

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that is mentioned in the article is not for this specific case. The subject case is Benningfield v. Zimeister. However, the Fuller case was held in abeyance until the Benningfield case was decided. A ruling in the Fuller case is expected shortly that will probably align with this Benningfield case ruling.

What Michael says:

Andrew was hospitalized for 3 days, which is a scary experience for a seven-year old. He got a little bit of an infection, had a whole lot of stitches, and can’t get back the piece of his left ear he lost to the dog, who was not a puppy.

Who gets paid? The property insurer, who collected premiums, but failed to pay when there was a loss. They have the best of both worlds. Other than that, Andrew’s family must pay back almost $20,000 in medical bills before Andrew would receive any compensation for pain or suffering.

Because the dog owner bought a new truck around the same time we were awarded the judgment against her, she pays about $500 per month for the truck. But she only pays about one-third of that, $160 a month, to satisfy this judgement. That $160 a month goes into an account to repay the health insurer. Neither Andrew nor his family are allowed to have any money before they repay the health insurer.

Without the landlord’s insurer bearing responsibility for this, it may never be made right for Andrew. What do you think about that now? It’s not that simple.

Michael A. O’Hara

* Please note there are a couple of clarifications that Mr. O’Hara would like to make in the story contained above: