The Ohio State University’s Office of University Compliance and Integrity today closed a FOIA request from Fix the Court for correspondence mentioning S.D. Ohio Judge (and OSU Law adjunct) Michael Watson and the question of whether he was required to recuse in cases involving OSU.

Fix the Court believes he was, given that he makes money from the school each year through his adjunct teaching gig — not to mention the fact that his wife’s apparel shop has contracts for selling OSU merchandise.

For the last eight years, Watson presided over lawsuits involving the OSU athlete abuse scandal. Last month, 279 of the 280 plaintiffs reached $100 million settlement with the school, and Watson dismissed the case.

The thrust of our request, submitted in Apr. 2026, was to determine whether OSU felt any compunction about — or was actively in favor of — having one of its adjuncts preside over the case.

Scott Hainer, the university’s director of public records and compliance reporting, wrote to us today: “The university has determined that the records you seek, to the extent they exist, are exempt from disclosure as attorney-client privileged communications and/or attorney work product.”

It’s difficult to believe that no correspondence exists that avoids implicating attorney-client privilege, but we guess we’ll have to take their word for it.