Ohio Proposal Could Eliminate Notices Of Public Sales In Newspapers

The Ohio State Judiciary Committee is considering a proposal that would enable self-storage operators to place public-notice announcements for lien sales in commercial outlets other than a local newspaper. If passed, self-storage businesses could potentially save money by publicizing auctions through less expensive channels.

Currently, self-storage operators in Ohio must publish auction notices once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where their facility is located. While the time and frequency of the notice would remain the same under the law, the new provision would allow operators the option of placing notification in a “commercially reasonable manner” other than the newspaper.

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We're going to see a lot more of this over the coming years. More states will be amending their laws to free storage facilities from the grip of the local newspaper. Of course the newspapers object to this, they stand to lose billions collectively.

This bill was passed and is now awaiting the signature of Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Black's Law Dictionary defines "commercially reasonable" as "conducted in good faith and in accordance with commonly accepted commercial practices.

Yes, it is vague. 

I'm not convinced that "commercially reasonable" means, a paid advertising service. I think that it just means that the storage facility should advertise the sale in a manner that is common in the industry, regardless of whether money changes hands. Legal notices are commonly published online; so theoretically, under this bill, a storage facility could post the legal notice on this forum, another auction related website, Craigslist, a small local newspaper's website or even on their own website.

Eventually, just about every jurisdiction will have to change their laws.  How many more years are newspapers actually going to be around?  As the population ages, more and more of their customers are dying off every year, and the younger generations are used to getting their news on an electronic device.....phone, tablets, computers, etc. 

I don't even remember the last time I actually bought a newspaper.  I can read all the local news online for free and I don't have a big mess to clean up after!  You don't even need them for the coupons anymore because you can just find what you need online and print it out, or some of them you can even download to your phone.

Besides that, it's a big expense that the storage places shouldn't have to pay for.  Newspaper advertising is so expensive, especially in the bigger city newspapers.  Why publish ads in the local newspaper when you can run as many ads as you want on craigslist for free? 

Having said all that.....I still do run ads for about three days in my local paper running up to any large garage sales or especially estate sales I'm having........that same group of people that are dying off are the same people that have a tendency to bring large amounts of money to estate sales, and they're still reading the newspaper!

The Ohio Governor signed this bill into law on December 20th, 2012.

The term “commercially reasonable” will be satisfied as long as “at least three independent bidders attend the sale at the time and place advertised.”