Jillian is a member of the firm’s Professional Liability Department where she focuses her practice across a broad spectrum of professional liability matters, including but not limited to, the defense of municipalities and their employees, non profit directors and officers, real estate professionals, insurance agents and brokers, and employers. She has practiced in both state and federal courts and has argued before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jillian has been defending municipalities and their employees since 2013 and she has continued this practice with Marshall Dennehey, now leading the Cleveland office’s professional liability practice. Although varied, Jillian’s public-sector liability practice focuses on police practices, sovereign immunity issues as well as labor and employment claims. Her employment practice extends to private employers, defending claims before the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the EEOC, Ohio and federal courts regarding discrimination, harassment and retaliation, including claims brought pursuant to Title VII, the ADA, ADEA, the FMLA, trade secret litigation, whistleblower actions, housing discrimination and related tort claims.
In her real estate work, Jillian has a strong track record of obtaining favorable results for real estate agents, real estate brokers, title agents, and home inspectors in cases brought against them related to alleged negligence, misrepresentation, disclosure errors, and contract disputes. Jillian also concentrates her practice on D&O liability defending condominium and homeowners associations, as well as their directors, officers, and property managers, in matters involving alleged breaches of fiduciary duty, declaration disputes, real property document issues, and FHA, HUD and Fair Housing claims. Additionally, she routinely defends insurance agents and brokers and miscellaneous professionals in matters pertaining to negligence, errors and omissions. Jillian also has lived experience in non-profit D&O liability as a volunteer president of the board to a local community development corporation.
Further, Jillian’s practice extends to privacy and data breach matters, where she helps clients manage cyber risk and navigate incident response, containment, and compliance obligations. She also has experience defending corporate and individual insureds in product liability, construction, premises liability, and personal injury claims.
A native of New York’s Finger Lakes region, Jillian earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from SUNY Albany. She received her juris doctor from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where she launched her litigation career as an award winning student in the Criminal Defense Clinic. Before joining the firm in 2017, she gained valuable public sector experience as a judicial staff attorney and assistant director of law-skills she continues to draw upon in her advocacy for political subdivision clients.
Outside the office, Jillian can often be found enjoying live music or exploring the Cleveland MetroParks with her husband and their dogs.
Honors & Awards
•The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, Health Care Law (2023)
•The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, Personal Injury Litigation - Defendants (2024)
•The Best Lawyers in America, Personal Injury Litigation - Defendants (2026)
Classes/Seminars Taught
•Ohio Personal Injury Litigation: Secrets Only the Top Attorneys Know, National Business Institute (NBI) Webinar, December 15, 2022
•Political Subdivision Tort Liability, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, August 2015
Published Works
•'I Was Just Following Orders' - Ohio's Sixth Circuit Applies Fourth Amendment's Good-Faith Exception to First Amendment Retaliation Claims,' PLUS Blog, January 28, 2025
•'Understanding Municipalities' Rights and Liabilities in Weapons and Ordnance Legislation,' Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Journal (page 18), December 2022
•“Transferring a Plaintiff’s Burden to the Court: In-Camera Inspections Are a Necessary Burden for Most Courts in Ohio,” Defense Digest, Vol. 27, No. 5, December 2021
Pro Bono Activities
•Brief Advice Clinic with Legal Aid Society of Greater Cleveland, 2009
•Immigration Clinic with Catholic Charities, 2009
•AmeriCorps Service Member benefitting Legal Aid of Western New York, 2009
Results
Successfully Defended a Suburban Mayor in a Defamation Case
We successfully defended an appeal of a trial court decision dismissing a defamation claim against a suburban mayor. The plaintiff, a former police officer, brought actions against a former city mayor and related defendants, asserting defamation, false light and related claims. The plaintiff alleged that statements made during a press conference disparaged him and violated a non-disparagement clause in his separation agreement. The court ruled the defamation and false light claims were correctly barred by the one-year statute of limitations under R.C. 2305.11(A) where the saving statute, R.C. 2305.19(A), permitted refiling in federal court, but did not toll limitations for subsequent state filings after the federal court dismissal. The appellate court also found the former mayor’s statements, regarding police leaders who allegedly retaliated against her, were deemed truthful and, thus, not defamatory or disparaging.
Summary Judgment Won in Slip and Fall Case Involving a Large Supermarket Chain
We won summary judgment in Franklin County, Ohio, for a large supermarket chain in a slip-and-fall case. The plaintiff alleged he slipped and fell in the parking lot on ice that remained more than two days after the most recent snow fall and after the lot had been plowed and salted by a co-defendant. The plaintiff’s expert opined that no amount of remaining snow or ice is acceptable and that the standard of care according to the Ohio Building Code requires complete removal in order to maintain a “slip-resistant” surface. However, in Ohio, a premises owner is not liable for natural accumulations of snow and ice because persons are expected to appreciate the danger. The plaintiff’s expert did not opine as to what the defendants should have done, other than to completely remove the snow and ice. The court struck the plaintiff’s expert’s untested opinion as being unhelpful to a jury and found that the Ohio Building Code did not apply to the plaintiff’s pleadings without a claim for negligence per se. In disregarding the expert opinions, the court also found that the remaining snow and ice was “natural,” even though there had been attempted removal.
Thought Leadership
Case Law Alerts
Aw Heck, As-Applied Challenges do not Implicate a Conviction
April 1, 2026
A new ruling from SCOTUS gives a lesson in Greek mythology, but more importantly makes it a near certainty that civil-rights plaintiffs will be able to run their malicious prosecution suit through summary judgment, despite a conviction. The oral argument led many to believe that the justices felt this was a complicated case, but in Olivier v. City of Brandon, a unanimous Court found that a suit that seeks prospective relief from arrest is not barred by the previous ruling in Heck v. Humphrey.Heck holds that a civil suit cannot invalidate a criminal conviction and is most often cited in cases arguing dismissal of a malicious prosecution claim because the plaintiff had been found guilty of the relevant charge. However, under Olivier, if the same plaintiff pleads prospective injunctive relief, the case may continue without an ad damnum request for damages. The result is an as-applied constitutional challenge of the law under which the plaintiff was convicted.There is no question that there is merit in reviewing the constitutionality of statutes and ordinances - but the as-applied challenge comes with significant expense and limited functional results. The Court even acknowledges that for Olivier to succeed in his suit for prospective relief, a court would find “something past should not have occurred” - that “something past” being a conviction in most cases. To come to this conclusion and avoid the implications of Heck, Justice Kagan drew a parallel to a citizen that seeks to enjoin enforcement of an ordinance that would prevent the plaintiff from exercising his free speech in the manner he desires - of course before the exercise actually occurs. There is no question that Heck does not apply in the case of a preliminary injunction, but Olivier presents an interesting glance into a criminal justice system that allows an accused to challenge the constitutionality during the criminal trial, get convicted, then challenge the constitutionality again in a civil suit.Practitioners should consider a request for prospective relief as an as-applied constitutional challenge that will likely need to be briefed at the summary judgment stage, therefore requiring discovery into the circumstances of the arrest.
Case Law Alerts
Totality of the Circumstances: Tasing Okay in Immediate Passive Resistance
January 1, 2026
In a colorful opinion from the Sixth Circuit, the court found that it was not excessive force to tase the plaintiff when he refused to supply his hand for cuffing in the wake of more significant refusals to submit to the police officers’ authority. Feagin marks a return to the totality of the circumstances review, holding that there must be a comprehensive look at any relevant event that influences the use of force.The officers first encountered Mr. Feagin driving a Lincoln SUV, windows down, drinking liquor, smoking marijuana and driving down the middle of the street, causing the police vehicle to go into the ditch. There was a short pursuit before Mr. Feagin pulled over into a crowded supermarket parking lot, at which time the officers noticed the rear window appeared to be shot out. As the officers approached the vehicle, Mr. Feagin rolled up the windows. When an officer reached the driver’s side window, the SUV began to roll backwards. The officers banged on the windows, and the SUV stopped rolling. Mr. Feagin opened the driver’s door, and the officers grabbed his arm, causing him to limply lean out the door, at which time he began to resist and struggled to keep his body inside the driver’s compartment. During this struggle, bullets were falling from Mr. Feagin’s pockets. Once on the ground, the two officers tried to get Mr. Feagin cuffed, one officer attempt to grab his left arm, while the other had a partial hold on his torso. Mr. Feagin’s right arm remained free and flailing against the SUV. The officer holding Mr. Feagin’s torso tased him, allowing the officers to fully detain Mr. Feagin and place him in the rear of the police cruiser.Mr. Feagin alleged that the tase was excessive force, and the district court agreed, finding there was a question of fact, whether Mr. Feagin was actively or passively resisting at the time the taser was used.The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that the entire encounter with Mr. Feagin should be considered, during which there were numerous times of active resistance. The Circuit Court also held that, even if the taser was utilized during the “twilight” between active and passive resistance, the doubt should be resolved in favor of the officer making split second decisions where the threat or degree of resistance is unclear. The court held: “We impose liability on individual officers only in the rare instance where an officer tases a suspect who posed no danger and was fully compliant with officer’s commands or had completely ceased resisting at the time of tasing.” A dissenting opinion (J. Clay) pressed for a more limited review of the case, finding that the argument was based in fact, as opposed to legal analysis. In assessing the Circuit Court’s duty, the majority opinion railed against the dissent to hold:'[T]he mere existence of ‘competing allegations on both sides’ does not stand in the way of us assessing whether legal arguments likewise exist. (***) We instead consider the facts in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Any other approach risks eliminating our review altogether in this setting. After all, facts permeate every qualified immunity dispute. And qualified immunity exists to protect against a government official’s mistake of both fact and law. Those protections would be ‘effectively lost if’ an appeal were dismissed and a case ‘permitted to go to trial’ simply because a party highlighted factual disputes in the court of appeal. So rather than throwing up our hands whether the parties disagree over the facts or whenever the district court has assessed the record, we instead roll up our sleeves and train our attention on any remaining legal questions.' (Internal citations omitted.)The Feagin opinion should be cited by every defense practitioner in a tasing case or in a case where it seems the fact questions should outweigh the legal analysis.
News
98 Marshall Dennehey Attorneys Recognized in the 2026 Editions of The Best Lawyers in America and the Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America
August 20, 2025
