05/08/2026
Following up on yesterday's post on Sydney Yahner's malicious prosecution trial, one of the worst miscarriages of justice we’ve ever seen took place this morning in Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams's courtroom where she deprived our Cuyahoga County jury of the opportunity to decide on Ms. Yahner’s claims, instead granting Bobby George and his cousin Jacqueline Boyd a directed verdict in their favor, on the purported basis that we failed to enter sufficient proof to create a genuine question for the jury as to all three essential elements of Yahner’s claims.
More specifically,
(1) Judge Collier-Williams ruled that there was no evidence from which the jury could conclude that George and Boyd “maliciously instituted” the underlying “felony assault with a megaphone” charges against Yahner; or, in other words, that the jury could not reasonably conclude that George and Boyd lied about Yahner and her fellow protesters to cause them harm and/or accomplish an ulterior purpose - which in this case was obviously to shut down the protests at George and Boyd’s Town Hall, Barley House, and Harry Buffalo restaurants by the loosely organized “With Peace We Protest” group (which consisted mostly of about two-dozen twenty-somethings who, not unlike millions of other Americans at the time, wanted to make their voices heard by the powers-that-be in the summer of George Floyd’s murder (2020), whose protest Yahner had joined for about 45 minutes on the day she allegedly committed the assault at issue);
(2) The Judge also ruled that no reasonable jury could have concluded that Boyd lacked sufficient cause to accuse Yahner for assaulting her with the megaphone at the protest, even though the testimony at trial was undisputed that Yahner at most came within 4 to 5 feet of her, with a standard-issue megaphone, purchased on Amazon, that did not cause any alleged harm to any of the dozens of people who were on the scene that day during the 45 minutes or so that Yahner was present at the protest with her megaphone;
(3) and finally, Judge Collier-Williams ruled that the underlying criminal proceedings did not “terminate in Yahner’s favor,” because the prosecutor dismissed them “without prejudice,” and therefore could technically re-file the charges against Yahner before the statute of limitations on the underlying assault charge expires this July, even though these charges were dismissed in October of 2021, and even though there was not a bit of evidence to show that the prosecutor would ever reindict -- an argument raised by Defendants for the first time yesterday.
The essence of Judge Collier-Williams’s ruling was that “reasonable minds could not differ” as to whether it was (1) “more likely than not” that Boyd had faked an injury, and (2) that she and George lied to and threatened police, and exercised their substantial political influence, to have Yahner and some of her fellow protesters charged for crimes that Boyd and George knew she did not commit, in order to eliminate the inconvenience that the 2020 protests were causing them.
What’s especially extraordinary is that the Judge made this ruling despite having already twice rejected the very same arguments George and Boyd had already advanced in (1) seeking dismissal of Yahner’s complaint for failure to state a claim under Civil Rule 12, and (2) seeking summary judgment under Civil Rule 56 based on an argument that a reasonable jury could not find for Yahner based on the evidence we presented in her summary judgment briefing.
Having already found in Yahner’s favor as to Defendant’s Rule 56 argument, ruling that we’d presented enough evidence on summary judgment to show a genuine issue of material fact for the jury to decide upon, the judge could have only properly granted a directed verdict for the defense if either (1) we would have somehow failed to present the same evidence at trial that we presented with our Rule 56 briefing, or (2) that the defense not only presented new evidence at the trial that they had not presented with their Rule 56 briefing, but that this new evidence somehow undermined our evidence to such an extent that no reasonable jury could any longer find in Yahner’s favor.
Not only did neither of these things happen during this four-day trial, it was quite the opposite, including, among other evidence, that
(1) the four police officers who were on the scene that day, who observed and recorded with their dashboard cameras every second of what happened between the parties at this protest, testified and unanimously confirmed that they were present at the scene that day to fulfill their essential function to “protect and serve,” and observed nothing that would have constituted an assault requiring their intervention;
(2) clear video evidence and unrebutted testimony confirming that what Boyd and George misrepresented as a felony “assault,” was nothing more than Yahner having walked within a few feet of Boyd while using the siren function on her standard issue megaphone (which, again, was not alleged to have harmed any of the dozens of others who were on the scene that day);
(3) the testimony of one of this state and nation’s foremost experts on hearing loss, Dr. Edward Dodson, confirming that Boyd’s hearing in both ears was within normal range, and that her medical records not only failed to show that she suffered any trauma to her ears that day, but indicated that the mild and common hearing differential she had between her two ears was more likely than not to have evolved over time;
(4) body camera footage showing the wild profanity-laced threats that George made to Cleveland police officers to pressure them to charge Yahner and her fellow protesters, whom he repeatedly described as “terrorists”;
(5) text messages from George threatening two of Yahner’s fellow protesters the day before the protest at issue, including specific threats to put “assault charges” on one of them, and that he “had a rough time coming up for him”;
(6) evidence showing that George’s high-powered lawyers were exerting influence on police officials and prosecutors behind the scenes; and
(7) multiple misrepresentations in George’s and Boyd’s testimony at trial that directly conflicted with their prior sworn statements as to numerous key issues of fact.
Under Ohio law, evidence showing that a grand jury’s indictment was maliciously influenced by falsified evidence is sufficient to overcome the presumption that the indictment itself is evidence of probable cause. Yet the only evidence that George and Boyd could offer in response to Yahner’s case was essentially to assert (1) that there was an undercover “intelligence” officer at the TownHall restaurant who was also observing the protest at day (but for some reason never did anything to intervene in the supposed “assault”), (2) based on that officer’s post-hoc review of the very same body camera the jury saw, it was that officer’s decision to take the case to the grand jury, after he wrote his first and only police report that was ever filed about the incident on August 7, nearly a month after the alleged assault, but four days after Yahner and her lawyers (us) showed up in court to oppose Boyd’s petition for a protective order that would have kept them 500 feet away from Boyd, George, and all of their restaurant locations; and (3) that this “intelligence” officer’s decision to pursue charges was somehow made completely independently of Boyd’s proven lies, and George’s unhinged threats.
While the full trial record will be made available for the appeal, the basics are easily reviewed at the following links:
(A) Here’s what was Defendants’ essential piece of evidence, capturing what Boyd repeatedly urged to police officers was Yahner’s “assault” of her (about 30 seconds long), which the Defendants played to the jury approximately 20 times during the trial (this was literally the only independent evidence of “assault” that they presented; not a single other person testified to say they saw an assault that day, and, again, all officers on the scene said they were watching everything that happened on the scene and never witnessed any assault);
https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/wwb1f5fw4ahr50dy9llmk3cqdiu8ym99
(B) Here’s Bobby George’s profanity-laced tirade upon arriving at the scene after the protesters had left (about 5 minutes long) to berate the officers for not arresting the protesters for “assaulting” his cousin, who is pictured on the scene interacting with the officers while showing no sign of any injury, let alone significant trauma from soundwaves to her ear;
https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/ieovqywwj7nast7u6bqttrd9xn5ocrh3
(C) Here’s Bobby’s even more profane and threatening follow-up call the same day (about 90 seconds long), threatening to sue the “little b*tch” “f*cking bum” police officers and “whoop their ass[es].”
https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/c917ufpjkgt5taz0i6r494o244i7ed9b
And (D) here’s all the dash cam video from multiple angles capturing the entirety of the protest, and the entirety of the 45 minutes while Yahner was on the scene with her alleged assault victim Ms. Boyd, which is two videos, each approximately two hours long, which, along with Boyd’s false statements, falsified medical records, and George’s threats, constitutes the entirety of the “evidence” the intelligence officer reviewed in deciding to submit charges to the grand jury.
https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/017tywaybzildbn8a6plxq7jn91ggm28
It’s extremely rare for a trial judge to grant a directed verdict under any circumstances, after having allowed a case to be hard by a jury in the first place; it’s even rarer to grant a directed verdict before having heard both sides of the case (the Defendants here were not even required to present their own witnesses); and, for the reasons stated above, it’s especially inexplicable that Judge Collier-Williams did so here. We’ve never seen a jury react as strongly in favor of our presentation of our client’s case as this jury did throughout this trial, and neutral observers of the trial were stunned by the Judge’s dismissal of the claim, including one who remarked that she was newly terrified for her son due to his inclination to attend political protests.
We don’t doubt that the Judge had her reasons for what she did here but this is as concerning a result as one could see come out of our courts, for a lot of reasons: not just because of the obvious chilling effect on all manner of First Amendment-protected protest activity; but also because it sends the message that even in the branch of government where we’re all supposed to be equal under the law, people who have extraordinary monetary wealth not only live under a different set of laws than people who don’t, but the law will allow those with extraordinary wealth get away with all manner of abuse against ordinary citizens. In short, if our legal system offers no remedy to Sydney Yahner for what the evidence shows that Bobby George and Jacqueline Boyd did to her here, then it can under no reasonable view be called a “justice system,” let alone one where all Americans can be said to be equal under the law. And if our political system is electing prosecutors and judges who are willing to shrug and say, “we’re sorry that happened to you Sydney, but this is just how our system works, and we can’t be letting people like you recover for harm caused to you by the malicious acts of people like Bobby George,” then it is a political system that’s badly in need of reform.
Anyway, this is why we have the appeals courts, and if we don’t fight these cases even when we might lose them then the failures that allow these things to happen in the first place never see the light of day. We expect to have substantial amicus support for this appeal to help ensure that this case leads to justice for Sydney Yahner, apparently necessary clarification of Ohio law on-malicious prosecution claims, and much needed restraints on how much power Ohio law will give to claims by police officers, even and perhaps especially ostensible “intelligence” officers, that are wholly unsupported and heavily contradicted by all available evidence.
Finally, we would encourage any of the jurors who heard this case to contact us by email [peter [at] pattakoslaw [dot com] or by phone [330.836.8533] to confidentially share your impressions of these proceedings with us; and of course anyone who's interested in supporting Ms. Yahner's cause in any way should please feel free to reach out as well.
Thanks once again for reading and supporting this page and our firm.
