Bottom line
When a trial court denies summary judgment because material facts are disputed and the case goes to verdict, the court of appeals must review the full trial record, not just the pretrial filings, before reversing. Pure legal error in the denial remains reviewable after trial, but labeling a fact question as legal does not let a reviewing court bypass the jury.
The Question: Which Record Governs a Denied Summary Judgment After a Verdict?
Jose Camara was severely injured on a dairy farm when his clothing caught in an unguarded, rotating power take-off shaft. He sued his employer, Gill Dairy, L.L.C., for an employer intentional tort under R.C. 2745.01. The Madison County Court of Common Pleas denied Gill Dairy’s motion for summary judgment, finding a genuine issue of material fact on whether the company intentionally removed the safety guards. A jury then returned a verdict for Camara and awarded $1,934,000 in compensatory damages.
The Twelfth District reversed, vacated the judgment, and entered summary judgment for Gill Dairy. It treated the motion as raising a pure question of law, narrowly read the statutory presumption for deliberate removal of a safety guard, and measured the pretrial evidence against that reading. The Supreme Court of Ohio accepted a discretionary appeal and a certified conflict, and consolidated them. The procedural question: when summary judgment is denied because the facts are disputed and the case goes to verdict, what record does the court of appeals review?
The Holding: The Full Trial Record Counts
The court reversed. Justice Brunner wrote for the court, joined in full by Chief Justice Kennedy and Justices DeWine, Deters, Hawkins, and Shanahan. Justice Fischer joined except as to Part II(A), the portion addressing post-trial review of the summary-judgment denial. There was no separate opinion.
The court reached two holdings. First, when a trial court denies summary judgment because a dispute of material fact exists, an appellate court reviewing that ruling after trial may not look solely at the record as it stood at the summary-judgment stage; reversal is appropriate only if no dispute of material fact exists after review of both the summary-judgment record and the trial record (¶ 30). Second, the rebuttable presumption in R.C. 2745.01(C) attaches on evidence of the employer’s deliberate removal of an equipment safety guard, and no court may add a requirement that the employer also decided not to reattach it (¶ 38, 39). The court answered the certified question in the negative and remanded to the Twelfth District to decide two assignments of error it had not reached (¶ 48).
The Reasoning: Legal Error Survives Trial; Factual Disputes Do Not Freeze in Time
The court began with finality. A denial of summary judgment is generally not a final order under R.C. 2505.02(B); it becomes reviewable once a final judgment is entered. Relying on its earlier decision in Bliss v. Johns Manville, 2022-Ohio-4366, the court agreed with Gill Dairy that errors of law in a summary-judgment decision are not mooted by a later trial and may be reviewed in a post-trial appeal (¶ 30). But a denial grounded in a factual dispute is different. Relying on its earlier decision in Continental Ins. Co. v. Whittington, 1994-Ohio-362, the court explained that the reviewing court must look beyond the pretrial filings:
“Rather, an appellate court must also take into account the full record after trial.” (¶ 30)
The problem was not the rule but its application. The court said so directly: “Although both parties correctly identify the applicable principles of law, the court of appeals misapplied the law” (¶ 28). The Twelfth District announced it was resolving a legal question, construed the statute, and then decided whether a factual dispute existed by pointing solely to affidavits and deposition testimony from the summary-judgment stage. The court found that “the court of appeals’ decision does not contain any language indicating that it took into account the record developed at trial” (¶ 31). A later reconsideration entry stating that the court of appeals did consider the trial evidence did not cure the error, because the review it described rested on an incorrect reading of the statute (¶ 32, fn. 3).
On the merits, the court read R.C. 2745.01(C) by its plain text: evidence of deliberate removal of a safety guard triggers the presumption. As the court put it: “No more and no less is required” (¶ 38). The presumption may be established by direct or circumstantial evidence (¶ 37). Reviewing the trial record itself, including evidence that a 2016 pump replacement required removing the coupling guard and a 2018 video image showing the guards missing, the court held that reasonable jurors could find deliberate removal under the Civ.R. 56(C) standard (¶ 41 to 43).
Why It Matters for Ohio Appeals
After a loss at trial, the denied summary-judgment motion is a tempting second route to reversal: de novo review of a pretrial record that may look better than the trial record. Camara keeps that route open for genuine legal error. What it polices is the label. Calling an issue a “pure question of law” (¶ 31) does not let the reviewing court ignore the trial record if the issue still turns on whether the evidence creates a genuine dispute. Once the analysis reaches the evidence, the trial record comes in, and a verdict rendered on that record is a difficult target.
The decision also shows that the Supreme Court will read a court of appeals’ opinion for signs of what record it actually reviewed. For more on how pretrial rulings fare after judgment, see our collection on civil procedure and pretrial rulings on appeal.
Practice Pointers
- Separate the legal question from its application. If a summary-judgment argument is truly legal, such as the meaning of a statutory element, frame the assignment of error around that question alone. If it depends on the evidence, expect review against the full trial record.
- Do not rely on a denied summary-judgment motion to carry a sufficiency challenge. Camara does not address Civ.R. 50, but its logic points there: if the trial record controls, test it with a directed verdict motion under Civ.R. 50(A) and a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict under Civ.R. 50(B).
- Appellees defending a verdict should name the posture. When the appellant attacks a summary-judgment denial, show that the trial court denied the motion on a factual dispute, then marshal the trial evidence with record citations.
- Use reconsideration to flag a record problem. Camara’s application for reconsideration under App.R. 26(A) put the trial-record issue squarely before the court of appeals, and its answer became part of what the Supreme Court examined.
The opinion
Supreme Court of Ohio · Decided August 12, 2026
Camara v. Gill Dairy, L.L.C., 2026-Ohio-3056
This analysis is published for Ohio attorneys and is not legal advice. It reflects the opinion as released; slip opinions are subject to formal revision before publication in the Ohio Official Reports. Appellate Ohio was not counsel in this case.