Civil Rights & Constitutional Law
Receiver Mark Dottore asks court to hide subpoena filing; Judge Celebrezze's former assistant...
December 14, 2023
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Still image from a private investigator's video-surveillance footage of Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze smooching receiver Mark Dottore on the lips, while tenderly cupping his face.
Today, the Supreme Court of Ohio refused to hear Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Domestic Relations Court Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze's last-ditch appeal to that Court. Celebrezze was trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse Celebrezze's total appellate loss in the suit of her former judicial assistant and former close friend Georgeanne Semary, alleging civil liability for acts of intimidation and retaliation.
Celebrezze failed.
Semary's case will now proceed in the trial court. Discovery will be conducted into Celebrezze's relationship with her favored receiver and alleged lover Mark Dottore, a relationship Semary's suit contends Celebrezze was trying to cover up. Semary, as part of her job duties, had provided open-court-case documents to a Marshall Project reporter who, unbeknowst to her, was investigating the Celebrezze/Dottore relationship.
The Marshall Project published this expose of the relationship.
Recently, the Supreme Court's Board of Professional Conduct recommended a two-year suspension of Celebrezze for various Dottore-related dishonest acts, including steering cases to him and lying about it to her fellow judges and in court records—conduct to which Celebrezze admitted.
Semary's lead counsel, Chandra Law's managing partner Subodh Chandra, has commented that the acts to which Celebrezze admitted are plainly crimes: tampering with evidence, falsification, and obstructing justice.
Chandra said of the Supreme Court's rejection of Celebrezze's appeal: "Celebrezze's gambit to the Supreme Court was doomed from the start. There was nothing novel or even legally interesting about the appeals court's decision to reinstate the suit. It was a waste of time and not even lodged in good faith. The oral argument before the appeals court makes that even more evident."
He added, "All Celebrezze is doing is delaying the inevitable—and all at massive, unjustifiable taxpayer expense."
Cuyahoga County has allocated hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for Celebrezze's civil defense in the Semary case, all going to a private law firm.
A federal criminal investigation against Celebrezze remains ongoing as a grand jury has issued subpoenas to the Domestic Relations Court. Subpoenas are also believed to have been issued to others.
"Drip by drip, every bald-faced Celebrezze denial has been disproved. She denied things in civil discovery in the Semary case to which she's now admitted to disciplinary authorities and the Supreme Court. There will be days of reckoning," Chandra said.
He concluded:
We wish she would just accept responsibilty and make things right with Ms. Semary. But every decision she's made so far—from the relationship with Dottore, to steering cases to him, to steering cases to herself that she could put him on, to retaliating against one of her best friends, to her prolonging litigation decisions—has been wrong, so why would anything change now.
We look forward to proving our case.
The trial-court case is captioned Georgeanna M. Semary v. Leslie Ann Celebrezze, et al., Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Case No. CV-23984974. The complaint asserts claims under Ohio Revised Code § 2307.60 (civil liability for criminal acts) for witness and public-employee intimidation and retaliation, interference with civil and statutory rights, dereliction of duty, falsification, and tampering with records; along with a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The amended complaint, which goes into greater detail, can be found here.
The case is currently assigned by the Supreme Court of Ohio's Chief Justice to out-of-county Visiting Judge Reeve Kelsey, whose decision tossing the entire case the 8th District Court of Appeals reversed.
[UPDATE (9/5/25): Visiting Judge Reeve Kelsey recused himself this morning and Ms. Semary is requesting that the Chief Justice appoint a new visiting judge.]
The Chief Justice has disqualified Celebrezze from continuing as a judge on the case for which the party hired a private investigator, resulting in the first Marshall Project story.
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