toledoblade.com -- Noe's attorneys sue Blade, state to prevent release of coin records

Two days after The Blade went to the Ohio Supreme Court asking that the state and local coin dealer Tom Noe turn over records concerning rare coins investments, Mr. Noe's attorneys notified the newspaper that they had filed suit against the state and newspaper asking that the records not be disclosed.

Mark Landes, a Columbus attorney representing Mr. Noe's Vintage Coins and Cards, told a Blade representative yesterday that a suit had been filed May 2 in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, but the newspaper had not been served in hopes of avoiding litigation.

The lawsuit states: "This suit is filed to protect the injured workers of Ohio. The Bureau of Workers' Compensation has invested its money with Tom Noe to compensate injured workers, and the investments have been greatly beneficial to the injured workers of Ohio. Now, the media wants to expose trade secrets that would result in a loss to the funds of those injured workers. We need a judge to step in to protect the funds."

The suit names The Blade and the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, which has invested $50 million of state money in the rare coin venture with Mr. Noe beginning in 1998. On Monday, the bureau announced plans to dissolve the coin investments, Capital Coin Fund I and II, amid concerns about their management.

On Wednesday, in its filing with the Ohio Supreme Court, The Blade charged the bureau has violated Ohio's Open Records Act by delaying release of documents requested by the newspaper and only releasing partial information on some documents with details of coin trades blacked out.

"As our complaint in the Ohio Supreme Court makes clear, we believe that the records we seek are public records, and that the effort to protect them as 'trade secrets' is meritless," said Fritz Byers, The Blade's attorney. "We look forward to having this matter promptly resolved by the state's highest court, so that the public can be fully informed about how the state's $50 million has been handled."

The Blade's suit, which names the bureau, bureau administrator James Conrad, and Capital Coin Fund I and II as defendants, requests access to coin inventories and names of business partners. Mr. Noe was not named as a defendant.

The suit filed by Mr. Noe's Columbus lawyer states that any attempt to disclose inventories and business partners would breach the fiduciary relationship the bureau has with Vintage Coins and Cards.

The Blade has reported that as many as 121 state-owned coins worth an estimated $400,000 have turned up missing from an Evergreen, Colo., office of the coin venture.

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