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David Marburger

A partner in the Cleveland office of Baker Hostetler, David Marburger is an authority on litigating legal issues arising from the content side of communications and litigating issues of constitutional law.

Cleveland magazine named Mr. Marburger was named one of Cleveland’s 20 “Most Interesting People.”

Mr. Marburger is one of only 22 lawyers in Ohio certified as a specialist in appellate law. Mr. Marburger has handled over 25 cases before the Ohio Supreme Court, the state’s highest court. He has litigated more than 250 libel cases, challenged the constitutionality of more than 35 laws and court orders, defended against over two dozen prior restraints, sued for access more than 50 times to open the files and proceedings of state, local and federal government agencies and courts, and defended and pursued dozens of copyright claims.

Mr. Marburger co-authored Access with Attitude, a 350-page “advocate’s guide to freedom of information in Ohio,” published by Ohio University Press. His co-author, former investigative reporter Karl Idsvoog, is now a professor of journalism at Kent State University. About the book, retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Andrew Douglas said, “it cannot be denied that this primer in the law of ‘open records’ is dynamite and is a must read . . . . The authors’ razor-sharp intellects come through on almost every page.”

Mr. Marburger and his brother Daniel, a professor of economics, wrote a nationally-publicized 160-page white paper concluding that unexpected side effects of the federal copyright law have combined with the unique qualities of the internet and inevitable laws of economics to threaten the survival of any firm that originates daily written news reports online. The Los Angeles Times published a condensed version of their analysis as a Sunday op-ed essay, and the Associated Press Society of Ohio specially recognized Mr. Marburger “for serving with exceptional distinction and honor and upholding the highest ideals of journalism.” The Media Institute, a policy think-tank in Washington, D.C., said that the newspaper industry “might owe a debt of gratitude” to the Marburger brothers “who have combined their expertise in economics and the law to analyze the problem and come up with a potential solution.”

Mr. Marburger was the primary draftsman of our newspaper client’s brief on the merits before the United States Supreme Court, where Ohio’s largest newspaper won a First Amendment challenge of a municipal ordinance. (City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750.)

Working pro bono, Mr. Marburger has drafted extensive amendments to Ohio’s open records and open meetings statutes, which the General Assembly enacted in various years largely as drafted. The Ohio Attorney General appointed him to a two-year task force to conduct a comprehensive study of Ohio’s freedom of information laws, and he was the primary draftsman of the task force’s recommendation for statutory revision.

Every year since 1995, he has been named by his peers as one of the best First Amendment lawyers in the country in The Best Lawyers in America. Inside Business magazine has named him as one of the leading lawyers in northeast Ohio, another magazine consistently has named him one of Ohio’s “Super Lawyers,” and the Society of Professional Journalists recognized him with the “Best Defense of the First Amendment” award.

Mr. Marburger’s general approach to handling challenging cases is to minimize the commonplace “pyramid” approach of leveraging far less experienced attorneys to perform most of the analyses and other legal services. A driven competitor, he is unusually “hands on” in trying to deliver the full benefit of his experience developed over some 30 years of his focused practice of law. Clients who retain Mr. Marburger for his specialty get Mr. Marburger.