Chaos is at the center of the legal battle between Newton Falls Mayor Kenneth Kline and village councilmembers.

Just two weeks ago, council passed a resolution seeking to remove Mayor Kline, citing allegations of misconduct in past council meetings.

More specifically, John Baryak, Gideon Fetterolf and Tesa Spletzer accuse Kline of gross misconduct, negligence and malfeasance.

Among other things, those accusations include improperly preserving order at meetings by allowing abusive language and personal attacks and conducting a public meeting in a city building after publicly declaring that building closed.

The village has a procedure in place where council can remove anyone who's not doing their job, but Mayor Kline isn't going down without a fight.

Kline has taken the case to the 11th District Court of Appeals. Kline is relying on a provision in Ohio's constitution that allows him to ask the higher court to step in and stop the action of a lower body, in this case council.

To put it plainly, Kline is asking that council not be allowed to hold a planned hearing on Monday, to vacate his seat.

21 News spoke to councilwoman Julie Stimpert who disagrees with this entire ordeal.

Stimpert feels some of the council members are the ones who cause a lot of the chaos and that it's not fair to put the mayor on trial for it. Stimpert believes they should have followed the advice of the law director to just resolve this on their own.

For now, the case is at a stand-still until council responds to Kline's request by Monday.