There is still a shortage of priests in Northeast Ohio as the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown continues its plan to merge churches.

It’s a plan that the late Bishop Murry began to roll out before he died.

“When I was ordained over 37 years ago, we had about 150 active priest, now we are facing a decline,” says Monsignor John Zuraw of the Youngstown Catholic Diocese.

Zuraw says it’s been a challenge.

“In 2024, there are 42 of us that are ministering within the six counties of the Diocese of Youngstown,” Zuraw said.

Stark, Portage and Trumbull Counties began to merge on July 1. In Canton, Saint Peter and the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist are now known as The Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Peter Parish.

Tom Sosnowski started attending the St. John Basilica in 1977 and says the change was needed and should not have been a surprise.

“A person was not expecting it? That was really silly,” Sosnowski said.

He told me it’s pretty obvious that the population Downtown has dwindled.

“Don’t have enough priests. I mean, if they did, still one would wonder about the financial viability of paying two priests and having two parishes; that becomes a rather expensive proposition. It’s expensive enough to maintain two buildings, especially two large buildings. They’re doing that, though,” he said.

In Niles, St. Stephen’s Church and Our Lady of Mount Carmel joined to form St. Pope John the XXIII.

Under the plan, a priest may be pulling double duty, overseeing multiple parishes with staggered services. The church buildings will remain open.

“The merged units, especially help where there’s not a multiplication of meetings, but rather there’s one finance council meeting, there’s one parish council meeting. So that does, in fact, save some time, it saves some energy,” Zuraw said.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a man who ordered boneless wings should have expected bones to be in them, denying him a jury trial after he suffered major injuries, including several surgeries and two medically induced comas. A state legislator is so outraged by the decision that he plans to propose a bill to change the law.

State Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus) is an avid wing fan, having weekly wing nights with his friends when he was in college. Just recently, he went to an all-you-can-eat boneless wings event.

“I did not expect to have a bone in my boneless wings,” DeMora said.

But that isn’t how the state sees it.

Chicken wings advertised as ‘boneless’ can have bones, Ohio Supreme Court decides

The case

Back in 2017, Michael Berkheimer ordered boneless wings at Wings on Brookwood in Southwest Ohio, according to his lawsuit filed in Butler County. The menu of the restaurant was included the court documents and did not feature any disclaimer saying bone fragments could be in the food. As of Friday, it still doesn’t.

He had cut up his wing into thirds, eating the first two pieces of it normally. On his third one, Berkheimer felt like something went down the wrong “pipe,” the court documents said. He ran to the restroom and tried to vomit, unsuccessfully. That night, he developed a fever, and for the next two days, he couldn’t eat a bite of food without throwing up, records state.

He was rushed to the ER with a 105-degree fever, the lawsuit states. Doctors found a 1 and 3/8 inch chicken bone in his throat, one that tore open the wall of his esophagus. From there, he developed a “massive infection in his thoracic cavity,” the document says.

“The severity of the infection, which centered on Mr. Berkheimer’s heart and lungs, required several surgeries, two medically induced comas, and a week-long stay in intensive care, followed by two-to-three additional weeks in the hospital,” the lawsuit states.

The medical issues are still ongoing, records state.

Berkheimer sued the restaurant and their chicken suppliers, arguing that the sellers’ “negligence” led to his injuries.

Both the Butler County Court of Common Pleas and the Twelfth District Court of Appeals sided against Berkheimer, arguing that “common sense dictated the presence of bone fragments in meat dishes,” according to the courts. Neither court let the case go to trial.

Supreme Court

On Thursday, the majority of the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts made the right decision, denying Berkheimer the ability to continue his lawsuit to a jury trial. The court was split four Republicans to three Democrats.

The justices were just supposed to decide whether or not it could go to trial, Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Entin said.

“The majority said no way this case shouldn’t go to trial at all because no reasonable consumer would think that boneless chicken wings might not have bones in them, especially since bones are part of chickens,” Entin explained.

The court didn’t believe a jury would rule in Berkheimer’s favor, he said.

In the majority opinion, Justice Joe Deters wrote that the restaurant wasn’t liable “when the consumer could have reasonably expected and guarded against the presence of the injurious substance in the food.”

Deters added that “boneless wings” are a cooking style, according to the opinion. He compared “boneless wings” to the food “chicken fingers,” noting that people would not actually think they are eating fingers.

The courts used the ‘Allen test’ method to determine negligence, which evaluates both if the harmful substance was foreign to the food or natural and whether the customer could reasonably guard against it. They found that the bone was natural and large in comparison to the piece of chicken.

“Any reasonable consumer should have been able to find it,” Entin said, explaining the court’s opinion.

The Democrats emphatically dissented.

“The result in this case is another nail in the coffin of the American jury system,” dissenting opinion author Justice Michael Donnelly said.

The case is merely about whether Berkheimer can have a jury of his peers decide if the restaurant and suppliers were negligent according to law, he said.

“The majority opinion makes a factual determination to ensure that a jury does not have a chance to apply something the majority opinion lacks— common sense,” the justice continued.

He continued on to explain that they didn’t have the full facts, being unable to see what the bone looked like.

“If it did, then I suggest that the majority suffers from a serious, perhaps disingenuous, lack of perspective,” the justice said.

The idea that the label “boneless wing” is a cooking style is “Jabberwocky,” the Democrat said, saying the absurdity of the opinion reads like a “Lewis Carroll piece of fiction.”

This could have ripple effects, Donnelly argued. For people who are nut, dairy or gluten-free, the court seemed to have decided that if they order allergy-free food, it could still have the allergen because that is “natural” to the food.

Deters responded to this, claiming it was different.

“But unlike the presence of the bone in this case, the presence of lactose or gluten in a food that was advertised as lactose-free or gluten-free is not something a consumer would customarily expect and be able to guard against,” Deters said.

It’s a lot harder to detect gluten or lactose than it is to detect a bone, Entin explained.

Reaction

This is insane, DeMora said.

“This defies logic, it defies reason, it defies common sense,” DeMora said. “Now the definition of boneless, according to the Ohio Supreme Court, means… it could have a bone.”

The justices are blocking Berkheimer from having a jury trial because they don’t care about the “regular Ohioan,” he said.

“You get screwed out of your day in court because we have to protect our donors and our corporations more than we protect our citizens,” the lawmaker said.

DeMora has already directed his team to start looking into what they can do to help Berkheimer and other Ohioans.

“We can’t really pass a law saying that boneless chicken means there’s no bones in it — Although maybe we can, I don’t know. If that’s possible, I’m gonna do it for sure.”

Regardless of that idea, he is also researching other consumer protection provisions he can draft bills around, he said.

Berkheimer’s attorney, Robb Stokar, agreed that this case wasn’t fair.

“I believe the dissent correctly wrote that the ruling was “another nail in the coffin of the American jury system.” Mr. Berkheimer suffered catastrophic injuries from a bone contained in a menu item unambiguously advertised as “boneless” at every level of commerce. All we asked is that a jury be able to make a commonsense determination as to whether he should be able to recover for his injuries. But the Court’s majority ruled otherwise, simultaneously denying him that opportunity, and rendering the word “boneless” completely meaningless,” Stokar told me.

Some of these justices are up for reelection, so Entin anticipates some politicos could put ads up about this decision — especially because Deters’ tone did not need to be as harsh as it was.

“You don’t have to get into all of the technical details of legal doctrine to be able to say this is a decision that shows that a majority of the current court are not sympathetic to ordinary people who get hurt through, basically, no fault of their own,” Entin said.

Deters, Donnelly and dissenting Justice Melody Stewart are all up for election in November.

“Boneless means without bones,” DeMora said. “I can’t understand the logic of the Republican majority.”

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the first time since his Senate career began, Sherrod Brown has failed to earn the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police’s endorsement for re-election — and the union cites the Democrat’s tweet about a controversial shooting.

The Ohio FOP in 2006 endorsed then-Sen. and now-Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican who lost his seat to Brown in an upset.

Since then, Brown has won the support of law enforcement, deftly navigating the blue-dog politics of an ever-reddening state. But not this year.

“It came down to a tweet,” said Mike Weinman, Ohio FOP spokesman and a retired officer who was paralyzed in the line of duty. “There was a shooting here, and Sherrod, instead of taking time to listen and talk to us and understand the situation, did what all these people do now and got on his phone. Brown made a comment. It’s a shame.”

The incident Weinman refers to dates back to 2021, when Columbus cop Nicholas Reardon fatally shot 16-year-old foster child Ma’Khia Bryant after responding to a domestic-violence call. He arrived at the scene to find Bryant swinging a knife at another young child in the home. 

“When he arrived it was complete chaos,” Weinman told The Post. “She was using a weapon on an unarmed person so he had to unfortunately use his service weapon to neutralize the scene. Nobody in that house including the officer is happy that happened, let me tell you. But Brown spoke out quickly against the officer, and a lot of people I think remembered that during the vote.”

The senator tweeted one day after the April 21, 2021, shooting and tied it to another event that day: a former Minneapolis cop’s conviction for killing George Floyd.

“While the verdict was being read in the Derek Chauvin trial, Columbus police shot and killed a sixteen-year-old girl. Her name was Ma’Khia Bryant. She should be alive right now,” Brown wrote.

Bryant’s death also sparked Black Lives Matter protests — she was black, Reardon is white.

But the officer was cleared of wrongdoing, with a grand jury declining to charge him after a review found the shooting justified.

Weinman also says further “statements” from the senator about police may have cost him more votes.

“People here genuinely don’t know where he stands on things like George Floyd and qualified immunity. Our voters know their stuff, and he just wasn’t being clear enough about where he stands. Brown has always been great for supplies, vests, helping us get resources. But I think now our people aren’t as sure they can trust him,” he told The Post.

Weinman explained the endorsement process: An FOP committee screens a small batch of candidates for office. The approved candidates are then brought up for a floor vote. 

“They called his name, and it was time,” Weinman said. “He missed it by four votes.”

Brown’s Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, won’t receive the FOP endorsement this year either, but Weinman says this has more to do with procedure than politics.

“In the past, if a candidate failed to get the votes on the floor, a member could make a motion to suggest a new name, and we could have an immediate, direct vote,” Weinman said. “This year we changed that. Only names from the screening committee could be voted on, and only Brown made it past them.”

The committee passed on Moreno due to his lack of political experience.

“He’s too new,” Weinman said. “Great businessman, potential for sure. But he has to prove it. Like Vance did.”

By this, Weinman is referring to a similar vote in 2018 when then-Senate candidate J.D. Vance was able to win the prized endorsement over more experienced competitors.

“Vance really worked for it. He campaigned. Moreno ran out of time,” Weinman said. 

He also confirmed the Ohio FOP will not be making any additional statewide endorsements for 2024.

Brown is the only prominent Democrat left in the soon-to-be-solid-red Ohio, making his race with Moreno one of the most expensive and closely watched in the nation.

Brown maintains a 6.5-point lead over Moreno, but experts expect endorsements like this one and Vance’s emerging role as a national campaigner to have a significant effect on the Buckeye State.