Ohio Statewide Format — Civ. R. 10 + Per-Court Local Rules

Ohio Statewide Format — Civ. R. 10 + Per-Court Local Rules

NOT LEGAL ADVICE. Verify the specific court's local rules before every filing. Format compliance varies materially between Common Pleas, Municipal, County, and Court of Claims venues.

At a glance

Ohio has no single statewide pleading-format rule analogous to a uniform civil-rules code that dictates formatting across all courts. Format requirements live across three layers:

1. Ohio Civ. R. 10 — caption + signature block + form of pleadings (statewide minimum)
2. Ohio Rules of Superintendence (Sup. R. — most relevant: Sup. R. 26 on records and Sup. R. 44-47 on case-management standards)
3. Per-court local rules — each Common Pleas court publishes its own Loc. R. with page limits, certificate- of-service requirements, working-copy conventions, etc.

This skill enforces the common-denominator baseline. Always cross-reference the assigned court's local rules.

Caption format (Civ. R. 10(A))

Every pleading caption must include:

• Court name in full: IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF CUYAHOGA COUNTY, OHIO (or the applicable court)
• Division if applicable: CIVIL DIVISION / DOMESTIC RELATIONS DIVISION / JUVENILE DIVISION / PROBATE DIVISION
• Case number — Common Pleas case numbers typically follow CVNNNNNN (general civil), DRNNNNNN (domestic relations), or court-specific patterns
• Parties — <Plaintiff Name> / vs. / <Defendant Name> (Ohio uses vs. with periods)
• Title of the document — e.g., DEFENDANT'S ANSWER, MOTION TO DISMISS, NOTICE OF HEARING

The first-page caption block typically occupies the top 1.5 inches; body text begins below.

Paper format (statewide common denominator)

• Paper: Letter (8.5 x 11 inches)
• Margins: 1.5-inch top on first page (caption block); 1-inch top on subsequent pages; 1-inch sides + bottom
• Font: 12-point minimum (Times New Roman or comparable serif preferred)
• Line spacing: double-spaced body (most local rules)
• Page numbering: footer with page number; some courts require Page X of Y format
• Color: black text on white paper

Line numbering (pleading paper)

Apply continuous line numbering down the left margin of every generated Ohio pleading. Line numbers count every line of the body and restart on each page.

Ohio Civ. R. 10 and per-court local rules do not themselves require line numbering, and an Ohio filing without it is rule-compliant across Common Pleas, Municipal, and County courts. But line-numbered pleading paper is universal practice across the claude-legal marketplace: it lets the court and opposing counsel cite to an exact location ("page 4, lines 12–15") and never harms an Ohio filing. Apply it by default to every motion, memorandum, affidavit, notice of hearing, and proposed order. Exhibits and attachments are exempt.

For programmatically generated .docx documents, apply line numbering through the section's lineNumbers property:

import { LineNumberRestartFormat } from "docx";

sections: [{
  properties: {
    page: { /* size + margins */ },
    lineNumbers: {
      countBy: 1,                                // number every line
      restart: LineNumberRestartFormat.NEW_PAGE, // restart 1.. each page
    },
  },
  // ...
}]

This emits <w:lnNumType w:countBy="1" w:restart="newPage"/> into the section's <w:sectPr>. The numbers render in the left margin and do not shift the 1-inch text margin.

Do NOT set start explicitly. An explicit start: 1 renders off by one in LibreOffice (the first body line shows "2"). Omit start — it defaults to 1 in OOXML.

Margin rule (double vertical line)

Draw a double vertical rule — two thin parallel lines (~0.75 pt each, with a ~7 pt gap between them) — down the left margin between the line numbers and the body text. It is the standard companion to line-numbered pleading paper. Like line numbering, Ohio Civ. R. 10 and per-court local rules do not require it, but it is universal convention across the claude-legal marketplace. Apply it by default to every line-numbered pleading; exhibits and attachments are exempt.

Implement it as two independent full-height line shapes anchored in the page header, so they repeat on every page — not as an OOXML double page border, whose style couples the inter-line gap to the line weight (widening the gap thickens both lines into heavy bars).

Draw each line as a thin filled rectangle (VML v:rect). One shape per <w:pict> — multiple <v:rect> elements in a single <w:pict> will not all render; each rectangle needs its own <w:pict> inside its own <w:r> run.

docx-js has no first-class API for header-anchored VML shapes. Add them with the docx skill's unpack → edit → pack workflow: generate the file with docx-js (give each section an empty Header so a word/header1.xml part exists, and keep the lineNumbers section property from above), then rewrite the header XML and repack:

python scripts/office/unpack.py out.docx unpacked/
#   ... inject the rule into unpacked/word/header*.xml (helper below) ...
python scripts/office/pack.py unpacked/ out.docx --original out.docx

Inside each unpacked/word/header*.xml, declare the VML namespace on the root <w:hdr> and add the two runs — one v:rect per <w:pict> per <w:r> — inside the header paragraph. A document can have several header parts (first-page / even / default, or one per section); add the runs to each distinct word/header*.xml, giving every v:rect a unique id. This stdlib helper (no python-docx) does it and is idempotent:

import pathlib, re

def _runs(i):
    outer = ('<w:r><w:pict><v:rect id="VRuleOuter%d" '
             'style="position:absolute;margin-left:60pt;margin-top:21.6pt;'
             'width:0.75pt;height:748.8pt;'
             'mso-position-horizontal-relative:page;'
             'mso-position-vertical-relative:page;z-index:-251658240" '
             'fillcolor="black" stroked="f"/></w:pict></w:r>') % i
    return outer + (outer.replace('VRuleOuter%d' % i, 'VRuleInner%d' % i)
                         .replace('margin-left:60pt', 'margin-left:67pt'))

word = pathlib.Path('unpacked/word')

# 1. Double rule: one set of shapes per distinct header part (unique ids).
for i, hdr in enumerate(sorted(word.glob('header*.xml'))):
    xml = hdr.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
    if 'VRuleOuter' in xml:                                   # idempotent
        continue
    if 'xmlns:v=' not in xml:
        xml = re.sub(r'(<w:hdr\b)',
                     r'\1 xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"', xml, count=1)
    xml = xml.replace('</w:p>', _runs(i) + '</w:p>', 1)       # first header para
    hdr.write_text(xml, encoding='utf-8')

# 2. Keep line numbers off header/footer text.
for f in list(word.glob('header*.xml')) + list(word.glob('footer*.xml')):
    xml = f.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
    xml = re.sub(r'(<w:pPr(?:\s[^>]*)?>)(?!<w:suppressLineNumbers/>)',
                 r'\1<w:suppressLineNumbers/>', xml)
    xml = re.sub(r'(<w:p(?:\s[^>]*)?>)(?!<w:pPr)',
                 r'\1<w:pPr><w:suppressLineNumbers/></w:pPr>', xml)
    f.write_text(xml, encoding='utf-8')

The <w:lnNumType> line-numbering element is already emitted by docx-js's lineNumbers section property (above), so the patch only touches the header / footer parts.

Geometry (US Letter, 1-inch margins, line-number distance 360 twips = ¼″): body text starts at 72 pt and the line-number gutter at ~54 pt, so the two rules at margin-left 60 pt and 67 pt sit ~7 pt apart, clear of both. The gap is the difference of the two values; margin-top:21.6pt + height:748.8pt spans the full page height; width:0.75pt is the line weight.

Verify with python scripts/office/validate.py out.docx then python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf out.docx; confirm two thin parallel lines with a clear gap between the numbers and the text on every page and that the header / footer text is not line-numbered. Then open the .docx in Microsoft Word, where VML renders slightly differently and the output must still be correct.

Signature block (Civ. R. 11)

• Counsel signature must include:
  • Attorney's name
  • Ohio Supreme Court attorney registration number (Atty. Reg. #NNNNNNN — required under Gov. Bar R. VI(1)(B))
  • Firm name (if any)
  • Address + phone + fax + email
• Pro se signature must include:
  • Name + address + phone + email
  • The designation Pro Se or Self-Represented
  • Omit attorney registration number (don't fabricate)

Affidavit vs. Declaration terminology

Ohio practice uses affidavit under R.C. 2319.04 for notarized sworn statements and uses affidavit under Civ. R. 56(C) for summary-judgment support. The federal-style "declaration under penalty of perjury" terminology (28 U.S.C. § 1746) is not Ohio civil practice. The oh-draft-declaration skill produces Ohio- correct affidavits despite its scaffolder-conventional name.

Citation format (Ohio public-domain citation)

Ohio adopted a public-domain citation system in 2002 — YYYY-Ohio-NNNN format is mandatory in appellate cases. Examples:

• Smith v. Jones, 100 Ohio St.3d 543, 2003-Ohio-1234, paragraph 12
• State v. Brown, 2018-Ohio-5678 (10th Dist.)

Trial-court citations follow the reporter's conventions:

• Ohio Supreme Court: Ohio St.3d
• Ohio Court of Appeals: Ohio App.3d
• Trial court: Ohio Misc.2d

For statutory citations:

• R.C. 1345.01 (preferred) or Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 1345.01
• Ohio Civ. R.: Civ. R. 10(A) (no Ohio prefix in in-state filings)
• Ohio Evid. R.: Evid. R. 803(6)

Common per-court local-rule variations

These vary materially by court. Verify before filing:

• Page limits on briefs — many Common Pleas courts cap motion briefs at 15-25 pages; some impose 30
• Working copies — some judges require courtesy paper copies; others rely on electronic filing only
• Certificate of service — format and signature requirements vary; verify Loc. R.
• Proposed orders — some courts require a Word version emailed to chambers; others require a tendered paper original

Composition with other oh- skills

• oh-quality-check — runs pre-filing format + content QC
• oh-cuya / oh-frank / etc. — flagship Common Pleas local-rule overlays
• oh-county-courts — long-tail roll-up
• oh-municipal-courts — Municipal Court format conventions
• oh-pro-se — pro-se signature + tone framework
• oh-fact-check — Ohio public-domain citation verification