How do judges of the Ohio Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Ohio Court of Appeals / Joined 1987 / Active

Mike Fain

Judge, Ohio Court of Appeals

Mike Fain is a Judge of the Ohio Court of Appeals, serving since 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: Since 1987 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Ohio Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fain authored 1,079 published opinions for the court (1987–2016), plus 19 dissents and 46 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Hopfer (429 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 61 of these were attributed to Fain by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1996	State v. Hopfer	679 N.E.2d 321	429
1995	James v. James	656 N.E.2d 399	176
1988	State v. Reynolds	550 N.E.2d 490	139
1995	Jones v. Billingham	663 N.E.2d 657	138
1998	United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. St. Elizabeth Medical Center	129 Ohio App. 3d 45	125
1992	Castlebrook, Ltd. v. Dayton Properties Ltd. Partnership	604 N.E.2d 808	117
1992	State v. Ingram	612 N.E.2d 454	113
2010	State v. Boles†	187 Ohio App. 3d 345	107
2007	GNFH, Inc. v. West American Insurance	873 N.E.2d 345	106
1987	State v. Brandenburg	534 N.E.2d 906	104
2000	Nilavar v. Osborn	738 N.E.2d 1271	93
1997	Broadnax v. Greene Credit Service	694 N.E.2d 167	93
1990	State v. Myers	580 N.E.2d 61	90
1994	Stockhauser v. Archdiocese of Cincinnati· Concurrence	646 N.E.2d 198	84
1999	Smith v. Five Rivers Metroparks	134 Ohio App. 3d 754	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,144 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Ohio Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Mike Fain on?: Mike Fain is a Judge of the Ohio Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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39 years on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).