Ohio Supreme Court: Saving Statute Applies to Whole Action

Ohio Supreme Court: Saving Statute Applies to Whole Action

The Supreme Court of Ohio held on October 15, 2026 that R.C. 2305.19(A), the saving statute, applies to a refiled action as a whole, so a claim whose limitations period expired before an earlier refiling is not barred for that reason alone.

Information last verified on October 25, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This decision construes an Ohio statute and binds Ohio courts only. It does not shorten or lengthen any Ohio limitations period, it does not touch Ohio's criminal statutes of limitations, and it does not decide the merits of any claim in the underlying case. For deadlines elsewhere, see our state-by-state look at civil filing deadlines.

What Happened

The case began in November 2016, when Adam Kohn sued Glenmede Trust Company, N.A. and Robert Siewert in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas over a contract for investment-management services. The opinion calls that first suit Kohn I. Kohn voluntarily dismissed it under Civ.R. 41(A)(1)(a) in September 2017, then commenced a second action, Kohn II, within one year of that dismissal.

Kohn II ended on August 2, 2022, when the trial court dismissed it without prejudice under Civ.R. 41(A)(2). On January 3, 2023, Kohn commenced a third action, Kohn III.

Glenmede moved for judgment on the pleadings. It argued that under then-controlling Eighth District precedent Kohn could not rely on R.C. 2305.19(A) a second time, because he had already invoked the saving statute when he filed Kohn II, and that without the statute the applicable limitations periods barred Kohn III. The trial court agreed and granted the motion.

The Eighth District then split the complaint apart. Reviewing each of the eight claims in Kohn III, it held that the limitations periods on Kohn's negligence claims had already expired before Kohn II was filed, so those claims had used up the saving statute and were time-barred; but that his fraud, breach-of-contract and promissory-estoppel claims had not needed the saving statute in Kohn II, because their limitations periods had not yet run, and so those claims survived. Recognizing that this conflicted with the Fifth District's decision in McGowan v. Family Medicine, Inc., 2002-Ohio-4071, the Eighth District certified a question: does the saving statute apply to save a refiled action as a whole, or to save refiled claims independently?

The Supreme Court accepted the certified question and Glenmede's discretionary appeal, then answered that the question itself rested on a bad assumption. "But, as we shall explain, this focus rests on a false premise," the court wrote at paragraph 8. It had already said at paragraph 7 that nothing in the saving statute requires a court to conduct a claim-by-claim review to determine whether the statute of limitations for each claim had expired at the time of a previous use of the saving statute.

The operative passage is paragraph 15:

Nothing in the saving statute provides that it may be used only once. And nothing in the saving statute provides that it applies only when a second filing of an action occurred within the original statute-of-limitations period. Rather, once an action has been timely commenced, R.C. 2305.19(A) does not limit the number of times a new action may be commenced in accordance with the statute's terms.

Source: Kohn v. Glenmede Trust Co., N.A., Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-4001, at paragraph 15 (Ohio Oct. 15, 2026).

To reach that reading the court leaned on the statutory definition of the word "action." R.C. 2307.01 provides that an action "is an ordinary proceeding in a court of justice, involving process, pleadings, and ending in a judgment or decree, by which a party prosecutes another for the redress of a legal wrong, enforcement of a legal right, or the punishment of a public offense." That definition, the court said at paragraph 15, confirms that an action is the judicial proceeding, not each individual claim asserted within the complaint that starts it.

The court also corrected what it described as the Eighth District's misreading of McCullough v. Bennett, 2024-Ohio-2783, its 2024 decision holding that R.C. 2305.19(A) carries no one-use restriction. The plaintiff in McCullough had filed his second action before the limitations period expired, but the court said at paragraph 14 that this fact "did not control our holding." It likewise distinguished Howard v. Allen, 30 Ohio St.2d 130 (1972), noting at paragraph 16 that Howard decided only that the original action must have been commenced in Ohio and did not address whether an action commenced under the saving statute may itself serve as the preceding action for a later use of it.

Applying the three statutory requirements, the court concluded at paragraph 19 that Kohn II was timely commenced under the saving statute, failed other than on the merits when it was dismissed without prejudice, and was followed by Kohn III within one year. Kohn III was therefore properly commenced.

On the certified question itself the court gave a one-sentence answer at paragraph 22: "We conclude that the saving statute applied to Kohn's entire action."

One procedural wrinkle is worth noting. Kohn had not filed a cross-appeal challenging the dismissal of his negligence claims, and an appellee who does not cross-appeal generally cannot attack the judgment to enlarge his own rights. The court reversed that part of the judgment anyway, explaining at paragraph 21 that certification of a conflict brings the entire case before it, not merely the certified question, under Article IV, Section 2(B)(2)(f) of the Ohio Constitution. The judgment was affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded to the trial court.

The opinion is a slip opinion. Its own notice states that it "is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports," so the citation above remains Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-4001 until the official report issues.

What the Law Actually Says

R.C. 2305.19 is titled "Saving in case of reversal," and its current version took effect March 24, 2010. Division (A) reads:

(A) In any action that is commenced or attempted to be commenced, if in due time a judgment for the plaintiff is reversed or if the plaintiff fails otherwise than upon the merits, the plaintiff or, if the plaintiff dies and the cause of action survives, the plaintiff's representative may commence a new action within one year after the date of the reversal of the judgment or the plaintiff's failure otherwise than upon the merits or within the period of the original applicable statute of limitations, whichever occurs later. This division applies to any claim asserted in any pleading by a defendant.

Three features of that text do the work in Kohn.

It is not a tolling provision. Tolling pauses a running clock, as ORC 2305.15 does when a defendant leaves Ohio and ORC 2305.16 does for a plaintiff who is a minor or of unsound mind. The saving statute does something structurally different: it leaves the original limitations period alone and grants a separate one-year window measured from the qualifying failure. The statute says "within one year after the date of" the failure "or within the period of the original applicable statute of limitations, whichever occurs later," so when the original period has already run, the practical effect is a fresh year and nothing more. Our guide to Ohio civil and criminal filing deadlines sets out the underlying periods the saving statute measures against, including the one-year clock on Ohio medical malpractice claims, where a separate four-year statute of repose independently limits refiling, as explained at the end of this section.

There are two triggers, and the second does the everyday work. R.C. 2305.19(A) runs either from reversal in due time of a judgment for the plaintiff, which is where the section's title comes from, or from the plaintiff's failure "otherwise than upon the merits," which is the branch at issue in Kohn. The Rules of Civil Procedure define the boundary of that second branch. Civ.R. 41(A)(2) provides that a dismissal by court order at the plaintiff's instance is without prejudice "unless otherwise specified in the order," which is the posture Kohn II was in. Civ.R. 41(B)(3) provides that a dismissal under division (B), and any dismissal not provided for in the rule, "except as provided in division (B)(4) of this rule, operates as an adjudication upon the merits unless the court, in its order for dismissal, otherwise specifies." Civ.R. 41(B)(4) is that carve-out, and it names two dismissals that "shall operate as a failure otherwise than on the merits": lack of jurisdiction over the person or the subject matter, and failure to join a party under Civ.R. 19 or 19.1. A dismissal that operates as an adjudication on the merits is not a qualifying failure, so it cannot open a saving-statute window at all.

Civ.R. 41(A)(1) caps voluntary exits in practice. Under the double-dismissal rule, a notice of dismissal filed without a court order "operates as an adjudication upon the merits of any claim that the plaintiff has once dismissed in any court." In McCullough the court identified this rule, and the trial court's power under Civ.R. 41(A)(2) to specify that a court-ordered dismissal is with prejudice, as the Civil Rules' protections against abusive conduct by plaintiffs seeking to extend a limitations period. It repeated that point in Kohn at paragraph 17.

Two further limits are easy to miss. One is on the face of the statute: R.C. 2305.19(C) excludes the section entirely from actions or proceedings arising under R.C. 2106.22, 2107.76, 2109.35, 2115.16, 5806.04 and 5810.05, a set of probate and trust provisions. The other is judicial construction rather than statutory text. In Howard v. Allen the court read the phrase "commenced or attempted to be commenced" to require that "the original action" have been commenced or attempted to be commenced in Ohio within the applicable statute-of-limitations period, a gloss the Kohn court restated at paragraph 16. That requirement attaches to the original action at the head of the chain, not to the action immediately preceding the refiling. Requirement (1) at paragraph 18 asks only that the preceding action was commenced or attempted to be commenced, with no timeliness qualifier, which is why Kohn II could serve as the preceding action even though Kohn II was itself filed under the saving statute after the limitations periods on some of the claims had run.

A statute of repose can close the door the saving statute opens. This is the limit most likely to matter to a reader, and Kohn does not touch it. In Wilson v. Durrani, 164 Ohio St.3d 419, 2020-Ohio-6827, the Supreme Court of Ohio held at paragraph 38 that "Expiration of the statute of repose precludes the commencement, pursuant to the saving statute, of a claim that has previously failed otherwise than on the merits in a prior action." That case concerned the four-year medical statute of repose in ORC 2305.113(C), and the court contrasted it with the product-liability statute of repose in ORC 2305.10(C), which does name the saving statute as an express exception. Kohn says nothing about repose anywhere in the opinion, so Wilson stands undisturbed: a medical claim cannot be refiled under R.C. 2305.19(A) once the four-year repose period has run, however the one-year saving window happens to fall.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The headline reading of this case, that Ohio plaintiffs can now refile forever, is the one reading the opinion does not support. The court's sentence is conditional on its face: the statute does not limit the number of new actions "commenced in accordance with the statute's terms" (paragraph 15). Those terms are the three requirements the court itemized at paragraph 18, and each refiling must independently clear all three. A plaintiff who misses the one-year window gets nothing from R.C. 2305.19(A), and a plaintiff whose case ended on the merits never enters the window in the first place.

In our reading, the practical ceiling on serial refiling was never in R.C. 2305.19 and the court has now said as much twice. It sits in Civ.R. 41. The first voluntary exit by notice is free; a second notice dismissal of the same claim is converted by the double-dismissal rule into an adjudication upon the merits, which extinguishes the claim rather than saving it. As it happened, the second exit in this case was a court-ordered Civ.R. 41(A)(2) dismissal rather than a second notice, and the court in McCullough pointed out that a trial court can specify that a Civ.R. 41(A)(2) dismissal is with prejudice. The discretion that governs repeat refiling therefore belongs to the trial judge handling the dismissal, not to the plaintiff drafting the next complaint. We note that the opinion does not say how that discretion should be exercised, and nothing in it directs a trial court either way.

The claim-level holding is the quieter but broader half of the decision. The Eighth District's method, auditing each count to see whether its limitations period had expired at some earlier moment, would have made the viability of a refiled complaint depend on the accrual history of each individual claim. The Supreme Court located the answer in a definition the legislature had already supplied, R.C. 2307.01, and read "action" to mean the proceeding. The result is a single yes-or-no question about the proceeding rather than a count-by-count audit, which is a meaningful difference in multi-count commercial and professional-liability complaints where fraud, contract and tort theories accrue at different times.

It is also worth being clear about what this ruling leaves untouched. The court construed a procedural statute. It did not revisit a single limitations period, it expressly declined to add a restriction the General Assembly had not enacted (paragraph 17), and it remanded without reaching the merits of any of Kohn's eight claims. Anyone reading the decision as a loosening of Ohio deadlines is reading something that is not in it.

How This Affects You

If you are an Ohio plaintiff whose case was dismissed without prejudice, the practical consequence of this decision is narrow: the fact that you have used the saving statute before, and the fact that a limitations period on one of your claims had already expired by then, do not by themselves bar a new action. The three requirements at paragraph 18 still have to be satisfied, and the one-year window runs from the date of the qualifying failure, not from the date you learn of it.

The deadline arithmetic has not moved. Ohio's underlying periods are unchanged, and nothing here helps a case that was never filed in time to begin with, because the saving statute operates on a chain that has to begin with an original action commenced or attempted to be commenced within its limitations period. The same is true of claims governed by their own structures, such as Ohio's two-year wrongful death deadline and the statutes of repose that run alongside several Ohio limitations periods.

Two things are worth understanding before relying on any of this. Whether a particular dismissal was a failure "otherwise than upon the merits" is a legal question that turns on the dismissal order's own terms and on Civ.R. 41, and a dismissal you believe was without prejudice may not have been. And the one-year window is short enough that the time spent determining the answer is time spent inside it. Because every one of these points depends on the exact wording of your dismissal order and the accrual dates of your claims, this article cannot tell you whether your own case can be refiled; that is a question for an Ohio attorney looking at your record.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It describes an Ohio Supreme Court decision construing Ohio's saving statute as of October 25, 2026, and it does not tell you whether any particular Ohio case can be refiled. Deadlines and dismissal orders turn on facts specific to each case. Consult a licensed Ohio attorney about your own situation.

Related articles

• Ohio statute of limitations: civil and criminal filing deadlines
• Statute of limitations by state
• Filing a small claims case in Ohio
• Ohio wrongful death claims and deadlines

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Last updated: 2026-10-25. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-25.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many times can you refile a lawsuit in Ohio?

R.C. 2305.19(A) sets no numerical limit, provided each refiling meets the statute's conditions. In Kohn v. Glenmede Trust Co., N.A., 2026-Ohio-4001, the Supreme Court of Ohio held at paragraph 15 that once an action has been timely commenced the saving statute does not limit the number of times a new action may be commenced in accordance with the statute's terms. The terms are the practical limit: each refiling must follow an earlier action that was commenced or attempted to be commenced, that earlier action must have failed other than on the merits, and the new action must be filed within one year of that failure or within the original limitations period, whichever is later.

Does Ohio's saving statute apply after a voluntary dismissal?

It can. A voluntary dismissal without prejudice is a failure otherwise than upon the merits, which is the trigger the statute requires. In Kohn the first action was voluntarily dismissed under Civ.R. 41(A)(1)(a) in September 2017 and the second was dismissed without prejudice by court order under Civ.R. 41(A)(2) on August 2, 2022; the court treated both as qualifying failures. A dismissal that operates as an adjudication upon the merits does not qualify.

Does the saving statute apply if the statute of limitations has already run?

Yes, and that is the point of it. R.C. 2305.19(A) gives a plaintiff one year from the qualifying failure or the period of the original applicable statute of limitations, whichever occurs later, so it does its real work precisely when the original period has expired. Kohn held at paragraph 18 that expiration of a claim's limitations period before an earlier use of the saving statute does not by itself keep that claim out of the new action.

What is the difference between Civ.R. 41(A)(1) and Civ.R. 41(A)(2) in Ohio?

Civ.R. 41(A)(1) lets a plaintiff dismiss all claims asserted against a defendant without a court order, by filing a notice before trial begins or a stipulation signed by all parties who have appeared; the rule is subject to Civ.R. 23(E), 23.1 and 66, and the notice route is unavailable where that defendant has served a counterclaim that cannot remain pending for independent adjudication by the court. Civ.R. 41(A)(2) requires an order of the court on terms the court deems proper. The difference matters for refiling: under the double-dismissal rule in Civ.R. 41(A)(1), a notice of dismissal operates as an adjudication upon the merits of any claim the plaintiff has once dismissed in any court, while a Civ.R. 41(A)(2) dismissal is without prejudice unless the order specifies otherwise.

What counts as a failure otherwise than upon the merits in Ohio?

Civ.R. 41(B)(4) states that a dismissal for lack of jurisdiction over the person or the subject matter, or for failure to join a party under Civ.R. 19 or 19.1, shall operate as a failure otherwise than on the merits. A dismissal without prejudice under Civ.R. 41(A)(2) was treated as a qualifying failure in Kohn at paragraph 19. By contrast, Civ.R. 41(B)(3) provides that a dismissal under division (B), and any dismissal not provided for in the rule, except as provided in division (B)(4), operates as an adjudication upon the merits unless the dismissal order specifies otherwise.

Is the saving statute the same as tolling in Ohio?

No. Tolling provisions such as ORC 2305.15 and ORC 2305.16 pause a limitations period that is still running, so the original deadline moves later. The saving statute leaves the original period untouched and instead supplies a separate one-year window measured from the date the earlier action failed other than on the merits. When the original period has already expired, that one year is all the time the statute provides.

Did the Ohio Supreme Court change any filing deadlines in this ruling?

No. The decision interprets R.C. 2305.19(A) and the definition of an action in R.C. 2307.01. Ohio's limitations periods, including the two-year bodily-injury period in ORC 2305.10, are unchanged, and the court expressly declined at paragraph 17 to add a restriction to the saving statute that the General Assembly had not enacted.

What stops a plaintiff from dismissing and refiling indefinitely in Ohio?

The Supreme Court addressed that concern at paragraph 17 by pointing to Civ.R. 41 rather than by reading a limit into R.C. 2305.19(A). In McCullough v. Bennett, 2024-Ohio-2783, the court identified the double-dismissal rule of Civ.R. 41(A)(1) and the trial court's ability to specify that a Civ.R. 41(A)(2) dismissal is with prejudice as the Civil Rules' protections against abusive refiling. Civ.R. 41(D) also lets a court order a plaintiff who refiles a previously dismissed claim to pay the costs of the earlier action and stay the new case until those costs are paid.

Does this decision apply outside Ohio?

No. Kohn construes an Ohio statute and binds Ohio courts. Other states have their own saving or renewal statutes with different triggers and different windows, and some have none.