Lakewood Based Lawyer To Challenge Browns Financing Through State
Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:44 am
Waaaaay before "Chomps" a Lakewood based group came up with Hanford pictured above.
Marc Dann, Jeff Crossman will announce plans to challenge unconstitutional, illegal funding scheme for privately owned Browns stadium at Statehouse press conference on Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and former state representative Jeff Crossman will discuss their plan to file a class action lawsuit challenging the legality of using $600 million from Ohio’s Unclaimed Funds Trust (UFT) to finance a privately owned stadium for the Cleveland Browns. The pair will discuss the impending lawsuit and distribute copies of the complaint during a Statehouse press conference at 10:00 A.M. on Wednesday, June 25, 2025.
According to Dann and Crossman the suit will be filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court immediately if the blatantly unconstitutional and illegal scheme is included in Ohio’s 2026/2027 operating budget and becomes law. Director of Commerce Sheryl Maxfield, Ohio State Treasurer Robert Sprague, and Akil Hardy, Superintendent of the Ohio Division of Unclaimed Funds are listed as defendants in the complaint.
To protect all persons who have funds in the UFT, the suit will ask the Court to issue temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctions prohibiting the defendants from reallocating or approving the use of unclaimed funds for private stadium construction and a declaratory judgement that the proposed scheme violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution, Article I, Section 19 of the Ohio Constitution, and ORC Section 169.01.
For more information, please contact Marc Dann at 330-651-3131.