Legal Question in Criminal Law in Ohio

I am a college student and on the last day of the semester ended up drinking too much in a complex with multiple bars. I'm unaware of what the exact cause of the incident that night was but I know it wasn't due to a fight or anything dangerous. I was detained and told to leave but never charged with any crime but I did receive a Notice to Depart and Forbid Entry from the bar for 6 months in the mail and if I return the property owner MAY bring charges against me. I have no criminal record and would like to know what possible options I may have in order to appeal this ban or gain permission to enter certain properties in the complex


Asked on 1/13/11, 2:04 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

The notice is from the property owner (or lessee), not the court. The owner has the right to ban you from the premises, and he has invoked that right. You do not have the right to enter against the owner's wishes. If you do so, you will be a trespasser subject to arrest and/or forcible removal. The courts will not help you, since you have to right to enter someone else's private property without permission.

(Please note that my answer presumes you were not banned because of your race, religion, etc. Such a ban might be illegal. But you seem to have been banned due to your conduct. The owners have every right to do that.)

But if the notice came from a single business within a large complex, it probably forbids you only from entering the premises of that business. The owner of one business probably cannot ban you from other businesses in the same complex, though I suppose the owner of the complex and/or the owners of the other businesses might have given him such authority.

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Answered on 1/18/11, 2:48 pm
Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

I need to correct a typo in my prior response. The last sentence of the first paragraph should have said "The courts will not help you, since you have no right to enter someone else's private property without permission." I had mistakenly written "to" instead of "no".

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Answered on 1/18/11, 2:57 pm


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