Record · Litigation
One Energy Enterprises Inc. et al. v. Board of Allen Township Trustees of Hancock County
litigation-one-energy-v-allen-twp
source
- instrument appellate-opinion
- file data/documents/legal/one-energy-v-allen-twp/2026-Ohio-405.pdf
- sha256 28d7b656ba5d3701da6b9581a69c3e04b5531199d93f0ad8278c2d0e163788d6
- content_verified text-layer
case
- caption One Energy Enterprises Inc. et al. v. Board of Allen Township Trustees of Hancock County
- citation 2026-Ohio-405
- court Court of Appeals of Ohio, Third Appellate District, Hancock County
- case_nos
- 5-25-02
- 5-25-03
- trial_court Hancock County Court of Common Pleas
- trial_court_nos
- 2024 CV 00038
- 2024 CV 00161
- decided 2026-02-09
- disposition Judgments Affirmed
- author Waldick, J.
- panel
- Juergen A. Waldick, Judge (author)
- William R. Zimmerman, Presiding Judge (concurring)
- John R. Willamowski, Judge (concurring)
- counsel
- appellants Marion H. Little, Jr. (for One Energy, appellants/cross-appellees)
- appellee Teresa L. Grigsby (for the Board, appellee/cross-appellant)
- costs assessed to Appellant; causes remanded to the trial court for execution of the judgment for costs
parties
- plaintiffs_appellants
- name One Energy Enterprises, Inc.
- detail [verified] fn.3 — "a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Hancock County, Ohio."
- name unnamed additional plaintiffs
- detail [open] fn.1 describes them only as "entities that have land interests in Allen Township" and names none. Identifying them is a retrieval target — they are the landowning side of the One Energy position in the township.
- defendant_appellee
- name Board of Allen Township Trustees of Hancock County
- detail [verified] fn.2 — "comprised of three trustees and a fiscal officer."
chronology
- date 2023-12-05
- para 3-6
- event One Energy petitioned the Hancock County Commissioners to rename Township Road 215 "Electric Avenue." Without convening a public meeting, the Board decided to attend the Commissioners' daytime meeting and oppose the renaming. At its own regular meeting that evening, residents raised zoning as a way to regulate wind-turbine expansion; counsel explained the R.C. 519.04 steps. After the meeting adjourned, some members stayed to discuss who might serve on a zoning commission and what traits were desirable.
- date 2023-12-18
- para 7
- event Notice published in the Findlay Courier of a December 20 special meeting listing "two resolutions (zoning and marijuana)."
- date 2023-12-20
- para 8
- event At the special meeting the Board moved to proceed with zoning and to establish a zoning commission under R.C. 519.04. Both resolutions passed without discussion; public comment was not solicited.
- date 2024-01-26
- para 9
- event One Energy filed case 2024 CV 00038 seeking declaratory relief for Open Meetings Act violations.
- date 2024-02-06
- para 10
- event The Board adopted a revised notice policy (fearing the original rule was lost or destroyed) and RESCINDED both December 20 zoning resolutions. Minutes reflect the township attorney recommending that residents be required to petition for zoning.
- date 2024-02-26
- para 11
- event Hancock County Board of Elections certified the resident petitions.
- date 2024-03-05
- para 11
- event Nine petitions bearing 141 signatures were presented, asking the Board to move to place zoning for the unincorporated areas on the ballot. The Board instructed the attorney to prepare a resolution.
- date 2024-04-01
- para 12
- event A protest was filed against the Board of Elections' certification placing zoning on the November ballot.
- date 2024-04-02
- para 13-14
- event After an eight-minute executive session on pending litigation, the Board proceeded with zoning BY ITS OWN RESOLUTION rather than on the petitions, and passed a second resolution establishing a new zoning commission. The new commission's members gathered afterward; One Energy's president/CEO claimed his filming was thwarted.
- date 2024-04-18
- para 15
- event One Energy filed a second complaint (the opinion writes "2024-CR-161" here; the caption page says 2024 CV 00161) alleging the Board failed to deliberate in public over who would sit on the zoning commission and by what criteria.
- date 2024-08-14/15 and 2024-11-07
- para 16
- event Trial. One Energy expressly disclaimed statutory damages, attorney's fees and costs, seeking only compliance, declarations, and invalidation of the April 2024 zoning commission.
- date 2024-12-30
- para 17-19
- event Final judgment entries in both cases.
holdings
- violations_found
- Taking an official position opposing the renaming of Township Road 215 without discussing it in an open meeting violated R.C. 121.22. The chairman testified he discussed the position by phone with the other members and then stated "the Board's position" at the Commissioners' meeting (¶29). Pleading objection rejected: Ohio is a notice-pleading state and the issue was fully litigated (¶27).
- Remaining after the December 5, 2023 meeting to discuss criteria for selecting zoning commission members was a deliberation, not fact-finding, and violated the Act (¶¶33-34).
- claims_rejected
- Notice of the December 20, 2023 special meeting was sufficient.
- The December 5, 2023 minutes were prepared in a timely manner.
- The April 2, 2024 executive session was properly invoked to discuss the One Energy litigation.
- The evidence did not establish that the decision to proceed with zoning resulted from nonpublic deliberations.
- remedy
- granted A prospective injunction: the trustees "are prospectively enjoined from engaging in private discussions of public matters in derogation of R.C. §121.22." Mandatory under R.C. 121.22(I)(1) once a violation is proven, though the trial court retains discretion over its terms (¶¶35, 40).
- refused The court declined to strike the selection criteria or invalidate the April 2024 zoning commission, on the trial court's three stated grounds: the informal discussion produced no official action subject to invalidation; the rescission of the December 2023 resolutions "constitutes an intervening circumstances that breaks any causal link"; and the criteria "were not unique" — "This Court declines to enjoin the use of common sense" (¶40).
- bottom_line [verified] Both sides lost every assignment of error. The zoning-commission actions of April 2, 2024 STAND. The Open Meetings Act violations are real and declared, but they did not undo the zoning track — which is why the instrument that eventually reached the electorate traces to the April 2024 resolution and not to the rescinded December 2023 one.
key_authority
- Look Ahead Am. v. Stark Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 2024-Ohio-2691, ¶15 — OMA interpretation is de novo
- State ex rel. Pelmear v. Henry Cnty. Land Reutilization Corp., 2025-Ohio-4998, ¶24, ¶30
- Ames v. Rootstown Twp. Bd. of Trustees, 2022-Ohio-4605, ¶¶20-21 — injunction mandatory, terms discretionary
- State ex rel. Bratenahl v. Village of Bratenahl, 2019-Ohio-3233, ¶23 — rescission does not moot a proven violation
- Springfield Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Ohio Assn. of Pub. Sch. Emps., Local 530, 106 Ohio App.3d 855 (9th Dist.) — causation required beyond the act of deliberation
- Blakemore v. Blakemore, 5 Ohio St.3d 217, 219 (1983) — abuse-of-discretion standard
corroboration
- claim The Wind-for-Industry turbines serve industrial hosts, not the Megawatt Hub.
- tag verified
- detail ¶2 of the opinion states as the court's own background that One Energy "was making plans to construct additional wind turbines in Allen Township to, inter alia, provide power to the Whirlpool manufacturing facility." Independently corroborates the correction recorded in issue 1464 (see data/extracted/grid/findlay/) that nothing places generation at the Megawatt Hub, from a source that is neither a company filing nor press.
- claim The zoning fight was triggered by WIND, and data centers were nowhere in it.
- tag inference
- detail The opinion's entire factual account — turbines, a road renaming, a zoning commission — runs from late 2023 through December 2024 without a single reference to data centers or computing load. The data-center question arrives in Allen Township only in 2026, after the resolution is already adopted and awaiting a referendum. That sequencing is why the adopted resolution has no data-center provision to be found: it was not drafted against that use.
open_targets
- The two Common Pleas judgment entries themselves (2024 CV 00038 Doc. No. 79; 2024 CV 00161 Doc. No. 66) — quoted in the opinion but not held. The Clerk of Courts eServices portal timed out on capture; see the access_failures block in the governance filename-map.
- The SEPARATE ballot-language case that invalidated the May-2025 referendum. Case number [open]. All the corpus holds is the township's own recital (ATZC minutes 2026-07-07) that "Allen Township's zoning status was revoked by Judge Jonathon Starn."
- The identities of the co-plaintiff "entities that have land interests in Allen Township" (fn.1). Relevant to any vested-rights claim over the Megawatt Hub parcels.
- Any post-decision history — a jurisdictional appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio was not checked for and is not asserted either way.
Where it connects
findlay/governance/litigation-one-energy-v-allen-twp.yaml · p.1 · findlay