Ohio Supreme Court Juror Bias Ruling: Valid For-Cause Challenges Now Require Disqualification

The Ohio Supreme Court juror bias ruling in Estate of Price v. Kidney Care Specialists, L.L.C., 2026-Ohio-4270, decided on November 2, 2026, holds that once a trial judge finds a for-cause challenge under R.C. 2313.17(B)(9) valid, because a prospective juror cannot be fair and impartial or will not follow the law, the juror must be removed and the judge has no discretion to keep them. The same decision still upheld a Montgomery County defense verdict in a kidney-cancer malpractice case, because the justices found competent, credible evidence that none of the four challenges the estate raised was valid in the first place.

That combination, a pro-challenger rule paired with a loss for the challenger, is why the case matters to every Ohio trial lawyer who picks civil juries. The court overruled parts of two of its own precedents, Berk v. Matthews (1990) and Hall v. Banc One Mgt. Corp. (2007), that had treated the decision to excuse a biased juror as a matter of trial-court discretion. It replaced that framework with a two-step inquiry: the judge first tries whether the challenge is valid, weighing every answer the prospective juror gave, and then, if it is valid, disqualification follows automatically. For plaintiffs' firms and medical malpractice defense counsel alike, the fight now moves almost entirely into the first step and into the voir dire record that supports it.

What did the Ohio Supreme Court decide in Estate of Price v. Kidney Care Specialists?

The court's syllabus makes three points. First, a challenge for cause under R.C. 2313.17(B)(9), the catch-all ground covering a prospective juror who discloses an inability to be fair and impartial or an unwillingness to follow the law as the court instructs, is a principal challenge. Second, under R.C. 2313.17(C), the trial court must try the validity of a principal challenge, and if the challenge is determined to be valid, the result is the absolute disqualification of that person from the panel. Third, Berk and Hall are overruled to the extent they hold otherwise.

Applying that rule, the court concluded that the Second District Court of Appeals had used the wrong standard of review when it asked whether the trial judge abused his discretion. The justices nonetheless affirmed the Second District's judgment on other grounds: the record contained competent, credible evidence supporting the trial court's determinations that the estate's challenges to the four prospective jurors were not valid. The jury's verdict for the medical defendants therefore stands.

According to Court News Ohio, the court's official news service, Justice Jennifer Brunner concurred in judgment only, meaning she agreed with the outcome but not with the majority's reasoning. Court News Ohio's summary did not publish a full vote breakdown, and this report does not attribute the majority opinion to a named justice.

Background: the kidney-cancer malpractice case behind the ruling

The underlying suit was a medical malpractice and wrongful-death action filed in 2021 in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiff, Harold Price's widow, sued both as administrator of his estate and in her individual capacity, naming several providers, including Kidney Care Specialists, L.L.C.

The claim centered on a lesion on Harold Price's kidney that an MRI detected in 2017. The estate alleged that the lesion was not followed up. In 2020, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer originating in the right kidney, and he died of that cancer less than five months later.

The case went to a jury trial, and after the evidence closed the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The estate's appeal did not attack the medical proof. It attacked the composition of the jury.

The four challenged prospective jurors

During voir dire, the estate's counsel moved to excuse four prospective jurors for cause, identified in Court News Ohio's account as Kerns, Vance, Walters-Sen and Hicks. Each had given at least one answer suggesting that they could not be fair and impartial or would not follow the law as the trial court instructed. The trial judge denied all four challenges.

Court News Ohio reports that Kerns was later removed for a medical reason and that Hicks was the only one of the four who actually sat on the jury. The Second District's 2024 decision also addressed a related complaint: it held that the trial court did not commit plain error when it did not allow the estate to exercise further peremptory challenges against the two replacement jurors seated during selection.

Timeline of Estate of Price

Date	Event
2017	MRI detects a lesion on Harold Price's kidney
2020	Kidney cancer diagnosed; Price dies less than five months later
2021	Widow files malpractice and wrongful-death suit in Montgomery County Common Pleas
Trial	Judge denies four for-cause challenges; jury returns defense verdict
Aug. 16, 2024	Second District affirms, 2024-Ohio-3122, applying abuse-of-discretion review
2024	Estate appeals to the Supreme Court of Ohio (No. 2024-1373), which accepts the case
Sept. 17, 2025	Oral argument
Nov. 2, 2026	Decision: valid (B)(9) challenge requires disqualification; Berk and Hall overruled in part; judgment affirmed on other grounds

Does an Ohio trial judge have discretion to deny a valid challenge for cause?

No. That is the core of the Ohio Supreme Court juror bias ruling. Under Estate of Price, once a principal challenge under R.C. 2313.17(B)(9) is shown to be valid, the trial court has no discretion to deny it; the prospective juror is disqualified.

The pre-2026 line of authority read differently. In Berk v. Matthews, 53 Ohio St.3d 161 (1990), the court described the decision whether to disqualify a prospective juror for cause as a discretionary function of the trial court. Hall v. Banc One Mgt. Corp. (2007) relied on Berk in the same vein, and the Second District cited both when it held that the trial judge in Price had discretion and had not abused it. Intermediate appellate courts routinely applied the same abuse-of-discretion lens to (B)(9) challenges, including in Cordova v. Emergency Professional Servs., 2017-Ohio-7245, and, as recently as 2025, in State v. Brock, 2025-Ohio-2538.

At oral argument in September 2025, the estate argued that the statute leaves no room for that discretion: a valid challenge means the juror goes, and the court should repudiate the reasoning in Hall as inconsistent with the statutory text and with deference to the General Assembly. The physician defendants answered that the statute itself lets trial courts determine whether a prospective juror will in fact refuse to follow the law. The final opinion gives each side part of what it wanted. The estate won the statutory point; the defense kept the verdict, because deciding whether a challenge is valid in the first place remains the trial judge's call, reviewed deferentially.

What is a principal challenge under R.C. 2313.17?

A principal challenge is a challenge for cause that, if established, disqualifies the juror as a matter of law rather than as a matter of judicial grace. R.C. 2313.17(B) lists the grounds, and the statute provides that each challenge listed in division (B) is to be considered a principal challenge, with its validity tried by the court.

Before Price, Ohio case law drew a line between the enumerated objective grounds in (B)(1) through (B)(8), which courts treated as mandatory once proven, and the (B)(9) fairness-and-follow-the-law ground, which courts treated as a subjective judgment reviewed for abuse of discretion. The Second District's 2024 opinion in this very case rejected the argument that the "will not follow the law" portion of (B)(9) is an objective determination, reasoning that a juror's first answer on a legal topic is not fixed and can change after further questioning and explanation.

The Supreme Court has now folded (B)(9) into the same principal-challenge structure as the other grounds. What survives from the Second District's reasoning is the insight about rehabilitation, which the Supreme Court relocated from the discretion question to the validity question.

Old rule versus new rule

Question	Before Nov. 2, 2026 (Berk, Hall)	After Estate of Price (2026-Ohio-4270)
Is a (B)(9) bias or follow-the-law challenge a principal challenge?	Treated as discretionary in practice	Yes, expressly
If the challenge is valid, may the judge still seat the juror?	Courts said the judge had discretion	No: absolute disqualification
What does the judge decide?	Whether to excuse, as a discretionary call	Whether the challenge is valid, on all the answers given
Appellate standard	Abuse of discretion	Competent, credible evidence supporting the validity determination
Role of later "rehabilitating" answers	Relevant to discretion	Relevant to validity; must be weighed with earlier answers
Precedent status	Berk (1990), Hall (2007) controlling	Overruled to the extent inconsistent

Can a prospective juror who says they cannot follow the law be rehabilitated in Ohio?

Yes. Estate of Price requires the trial judge to consider all of a prospective juror's answers during jury selection, not just one response to one question. The court explained that answers casting doubt on a juror's fairness may stem from causes other than bias, and that answers given later in voir dire may show that the prospective juror will be fair and impartial and follow the law as instructed.

That is the passage defense counsel will quote most often, and it is why the estate lost. The four prospective jurors in Price each gave answers that, read alone, supported a challenge. Read against the whole exchange, the trial judge found them qualified, and the Supreme Court held that the record contained competent, credible evidence for that finding. Court News Ohio's summary characterizes the court's view of the record as showing that none of the jurors ultimately indicated that they could not follow the judge's instructions.

The court's approach in the civil context tracks its recent criminal jurisprudence. In State v. Rogers, 2025-Ohio-4794, decided October 22, 2025, the court affirmed convictions where a prospective juror had expressed discomfort with child-witness testimony and struggled with whether he could be fair, holding that equivocal answers must show actual bias to support an ineffective-assistance claim and that group voir dire affirmations can bear on the analysis. Rogers has since filed a certiorari petition in the U.S. Supreme Court (No. 25-878) arguing that federal circuits and state high courts are split on the question. Price and Rogers together signal a court that looks at the full voir dire transcript rather than at isolated answers, whichever side raised the challenge.

Why did the estate lose even though the court changed the rule?

Because the legal error the court corrected did not change the outcome. The Second District reviewed the trial judge's refusal to excuse the four prospective jurors for abuse of discretion, which the Supreme Court held was the wrong question. But the right question, whether competent, credible evidence supports the trial court's determination that each challenge was invalid, produced the same answer on this record. When an appellate court reaches the correct result for the wrong reason, the judgment is affirmed on other grounds, and that is what happened here.

For the estate, that means the defense verdict in the kidney-cancer case is final in the Ohio courts. For future litigants, it means the doctrinal win is real but bounded. Getting a juror removed still depends on persuading the trial judge, at the time of selection, that the challenge is valid on the totality of the answers. If the judge finds it valid, the juror is gone. If the judge finds it invalid and the record supports that, the deferential standard of review will usually end the matter on appeal.

What standard of review applies to juror-bias challenges in Ohio now?

After Estate of Price, an Ohio appellate court reviewing a (B)(9) ruling asks whether competent, credible evidence in the record supports the trial court's determination that the challenge was valid or invalid; if the challenge was valid, refusing to excuse the juror is error without any further inquiry into discretion. The abuse-of-discretion formulation drawn from Berk no longer governs that question.

In practice, the two standards sit close together, since both defer to a trial judge who saw the prospective juror's demeanor. The difference shows up at the margins. A trial judge who finds a challenge valid but keeps the juror anyway, for instance to save time or because the panel is thin, has now committed error as a matter of law. And an appellate court can no longer affirm a refusal to excuse simply by calling it within the range of acceptable choices; it must find record support for the conclusion that the challenge failed.

How does the Ohio Supreme Court juror bias ruling affect plaintiffs' lawyers and defense counsel?

The decision is not a jury-selection revolution, but it reallocates where the work happens. Its effects differ by audience.

What it means for plaintiffs' personal injury and med-mal firms

• Build the record for validity, not discretion. Because a valid challenge now compels removal, counsel's task is to elicit and lock in answers that establish invalidity cannot be rehabilitated away. Follow-up questions that confirm a prospective juror's position after any explanation of the law become more valuable than a single damaging answer.
• Anticipate rehabilitation. Defense counsel and the court will ask leading questions designed to elicit an assurance that the juror can follow instructions. Price makes those later answers part of the validity calculus, so plaintiffs' counsel should be ready to re-examine after rehabilitation.
• Preserve the issue completely. The estate also argued that it should have been allowed further peremptory challenges against replacement jurors; the Second District reviewed that only for plain error. Contemporaneous objections and a clear record of exhausted peremptories remain essential.
• Tort-reform attitudes are fair game. Medical malpractice panels routinely include people with strong views about lawsuits and damages. Price gives counsel a firmer statutory hook when those views amount to an unwillingness to follow the court's instructions on damages or the burden of proof.

What it means for defense counsel and insurers

• Rehabilitation is explicitly endorsed. The holding that judges must weigh all answers gives defense counsel and trial courts clear authority to clarify and rehabilitate a prospective juror whose first answer sounds disqualifying.
• Verdicts are harder to unwind on jury-composition grounds. Because the validity determination is reviewed for competent, credible evidence, a defense verdict from a carefully conducted voir dire, like the one in Price, is well insulated.
• But a finding of validity is now dispositive. A defense team that persuades a judge to keep a juror the judge has found biased has won nothing; that ruling is error on its face and may jeopardize a favorable verdict.

What it means for trial judges and the broader Ohio docket

Trial courts in both civil and criminal cases will likely make explicit findings on validity rather than ruling on excusal in discretionary terms, because the opinion ties the appellate standard to that determination. Expect more transcript-by-transcript review of voir dire in post-trial motions and appeals, and more requests that judges articulate why later answers outweighed earlier ones.

The court's composition and what comes next

Estate of Price was decided by a court that, before the November 3, 2026 election, had a 6-1 Republican majority, with Justice Brunner the lone Democrat. In unofficial returns, Brunner kept her seat and Marilyn Zayas unseated Justice Dan Hawkins, which will move the court to a 5-2 Republican majority when new terms begin in 2027. Brunner's concurrence in judgment only suggests at least one justice would have reached the result by a different path. The precise disagreement will matter to lawyers trying to predict how the incoming court treats follow-on questions, such as what quantum of rehabilitation suffices or how the rule interacts with peremptory-challenge exhaustion.

The decision is also part of a broader pattern of state high courts revisiting long-settled trial-practice rules that shape plaintiffs' outcomes. In late October 2026, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sent a misdiagnosis case to a third jury in Smith v. Kannarkatt on causation grounds, and the Georgia Court of Appeals backed Walmart's bid for a new trial after a slip-and-fall verdict under that state's new anchoring statute. Price is narrower than either, but it governs every civil jury selected in Ohio from now on.

FAQ: Ohio Supreme Court juror bias ruling

What is the citation for the Ohio Supreme Court juror bias ruling?

The case is Estate of Price v. Kidney Care Specialists, L.L.C., Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-4270, Supreme Court of Ohio Case No. 2024-1373, decided November 2, 2026, on appeal from the Second District Court of Appeals decision reported at 2024-Ohio-3122.

Which Ohio Supreme Court cases did Estate of Price overrule?

It overruled Berk v. Matthews, 53 Ohio St.3d 161 (1990), and Hall v. Banc One Mgt. Corp. (2007) to the extent those decisions held that a trial court retains discretion to deny a valid R.C. 2313.17(B)(9) challenge for cause.

Did the plaintiff get a new trial in Estate of Price?

No. The Supreme Court found competent, credible evidence that the challenges to all four prospective jurors were invalid and affirmed the Second District's judgment on other grounds, so the defense verdict for the medical providers stands.

Does the ruling apply to criminal cases?

R.C. 2313.17 governs challenges for cause generally, and Ohio courts have applied its (B)(9) ground in criminal cases such as State v. Brock, 2025-Ohio-2538. Price arose in a civil malpractice case, and how far its reasoning reaches criminal voir dire, where Crim.R. 24 and constitutional standards such as those in State v. Rogers also apply, will be worked out in later cases.

Does a single biased answer require removal of a prospective juror?

Not by itself. The trial court must consider all of the prospective juror's answers; if later answers show the juror will be fair and follow the law, the challenge may be found invalid, and only a challenge found valid triggers mandatory disqualification.

Who decided the case and was there a dissent?

The Supreme Court of Ohio decided it by majority opinion. Court News Ohio reported that Justice Jennifer Brunner concurred in judgment only; a full vote breakdown and the author of the majority opinion were not confirmed in the public summaries reviewed for this report.