Justia Mississippi Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In 2004, Quality Diesel Service, Inc. obtained a judgment against Gulf South Drilling Company, LLC. Then, after learning that Tiger Drilling Company, LLC was indebted to Gulf South, Quality Diesel had multiple writs of garnishment issued and served on Tiger Drilling from 2004 to 2006. All of Tiger Drilling’s answers to the writs were almost identical, stating that Tiger Drilling was indebted to Gulf South but that the debt was not yet due. On November 29, 2006, Quality Diesel contested Tiger Drilling’s responses by filing a Petition to Controvert Answers to Garnishments, specifically contesting Tiger Drilling’s answer to a writ issued on January 18, 2006. On March 14, 2014, Tiger Drilling filed a motion to dismiss the garnishment proceeding. On October 3, 2014, the Circuit Court granted dismissal on the ground that the underlying judgment had expired while the case was pending. On appeal, Quality Diesel contended that, because the underlying judgment was valid when the writs of garnishment were issued and served (and when it filed its Petition to Controvert) it could maintain a garnishment proceeding against Tiger Drilling, despite the fact that the underlying judgment has since lapsed. This case presented an issue of first impression concerning Mississippi’s garnishment law: when a party gets a judgment, timely executes a writ of garnishment, and timely initiates a garnishment proceeding, is that party required to renew the underlying judgment to collect the “property in the hands of the garnishee belonging to the defendant” at the time the garnishment proceeding was filed, to defeat the running of the statute of limitations? The Supreme Court held that a party was not required to renew the underlying judgment to collect such property under these circumstances. In this case, the Court reversed and remanded. View "Quality Diesel Service, Inc. v. Tiger Drilling Company, LLC" on Justia Law

Devin Jones worked for T&L Specialty Company as a product technician from 2012 to 2013. On February 4, 2013, Jones timely reported to work at 7:00 p.m. and performed his assigned duties until his first break at 9:00 p.m. While on his break, Jones learned that his fiancé was having complications related to her pregnancy, so he left work early. He did not notify his supervisor, Mitch Monts, that he was leaving, but he did ask his coworker, Demetrius Tatum, to tell Monts that he was leaving and why. Tatum, however, failed to relay this message, and so Monts did not learn of the emergency. Pursuant to a policy in T&L’s employee handbook, Monts concluded that by leaving work early without informing him within eight hours, Jones had “voluntarily quit” his job. He immediately hired a replacement for Jones. Unaware that Monts deemed him to have quit voluntarily, Jones returned to work the following day. Jones pleaded with Monts, and then with Karen Hodum from T&L’s Human Resources department, insisting that he had not intended to quit his job and maintaining that he believed that, by leaving work early, he would only receive a half-point on his record. Jones’s pleas with T&L representatives proved unsuccessful and so he filed a claim for unemployment benefits. After determining that Jones voluntarily quit his job without good cause, the Mississippi Department of Employment Security (MDES) denied his application for unemployment benefits. Because the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) relied solely on an inapplicable provision from the employee handbook in concluding that Jones had voluntarily quit his job, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Jones v. Mississippi Employment Security Commission" on Justia Law

After all defendants to the original complaint filed responsive pleadings in Mary Meeks’s medical malpractice suit, Meeks obtained leave of court and filed a first amended complaint, adding as a defendant the manufacturer of a medical device, Hologic, Inc. A doctor performed an outpatient diagnostic hysteroscopy and an endometrial ablation on Meeks at the Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale using a Novasure medical device manufactured and sold by Hologic to treat Meeks’s menorrhagia. Meeks did not serve the first amended complaint on Hologic but instead filed a second amended complaint without leave of court or permission from all defendants. Hologic filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that Meeks’s claims against Hologic were federally preempted and that Meeks’s claims additionally were barred by the statute of limitations. Because Meeks failed to obtain leave of court or permission from the defendants to file the second complaint, and because the first was never served on Hologic, the Supreme Court found that the statute of limitations had expired against Hologic and that the trial court properly granted Hologic’s motion to dismiss. View "Mary Meeks v. Hologic, Inc." on Justia Law

On March 24, 2006, the Circuit Court granted Dr. Charles Brock and Dr. Steven Clark summary judgment based on the expiration of the one-year statute of limitations in the Mississippi Tort Claims Act (“MTCA”). In 2010, Bolivar Medical Center (“BMC”), the final remaining defendant, was dismissed with prejudice. Improperly relying on an order certifying the March 24, 2006, order as final, which was later corrected by two separate orders by the trial court, Ginger Pope, administrarix of the Estate of Nancy Springer, requested an additional fourteen days in which to file her appeal. The trial court granted Pope additional time, and she filed her notice of appeal on October 9, 2013. The doctors appealed, and after review, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that the trial court erroneously granted Pope additional time to file her appeal. The Court dismissed Pope’s appeal as out of time. View "Pope v. Brock" on Justia Law

Alan and Linda Anderson filed a medical malpractice action against Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital but failed to designate an expert timely in accordance with the scheduling order imposed by the Circuit Court. The Andersons filed their expert designation out of time, along with a motion for continuance. The hospital moved to strike the expert designation and moved for summary judgment. The circuit court granted a continuance to the Andersons and denied both the hospital’s motion to strike and its motion for summary judgment. The hospital filed an interlocutory appeal to challenge the denial of its motion for summary judgment. But after review, and finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed the Circuit Court. View "Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital v. Anderson" on Justia Law

The issue this case presented for the Mississippi Supreme Court's review centered on the validity of a 1995 Florida divorce decree. Sarath Sapukotana (Sarath) and Palihawadanage Ramya Chandralatha Fernando (Fernando) were married in Sri Lanka in 1992. Sarath moved to the United States a year later. In 1995, a Florida court entered an uncontested divorce decree, dissolving the marriage of Sarath and Fernando. In 2004, Sarath then married Martha Gay Weaver Sapukotana (Martha) in Mississippi. Sarath died intestate in 2008 from injuries which led to a wrongful death suit. The trial court granted Martha’s petition to be named the administratrix of the estate, over the objection of Fernando, Sarath’s first wife. This allowed Martha to file, and later to settle, the wrongful death claim. Fernando claims that the 1995 Florida divorce decree was fraudulent and void for lack of service of process, and that she instead was the rightful beneficiary to Sarath’s estate and to the proceeds of the wrongful death action. Fernando filed a motion to vacate the chancery court’s decision to appoint Martha as administratrix of Sarath’s estate. The chancery court dismissed Fernando’s motion and held that Martha was the rightful beneficiary to Sarath’s estate. Fernando appealed. The Supreme Court affirmed the chancery court, finding that the chancery court lacked authority to vacate the 1995 Florida divorce decree. View "In Re: In the Matter of the Estate of Sarath Sapukotana" on Justia Law

Deborah Jackson sued Illinois Central Railroad Company under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) for the wrongful death of her husband, Charles. Jackson alleged that her husband’s death from lung cancer was caused by his exposure to asbestos while working for the railroad. After the close of discovery, Illinois Central filed a motion for summary judgment and a motion to strike Jackson’s expert, Michael Ellenbecker. Later, Illinois Central moved to strike improper evidence from Jackson’s response to the motion for summary judgment. When Jackson attempted to supplement Ellenbecker’s designation at the summary-judgment hearing, Illinois Central moved ore tenus to strike the supplementation. The Circuit Court denied all of Illinois Central’s motions. Illinois Central appealed. After review, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that Jackson’s expert designation of Ellenbecker was improper summary-judgment evidence because it was not sworn to upon personal knowledge and constituted inadmissible hearsay. Because the supplemental response was unsworn and never was filed, it also was improper. And, because Jackson could not show a genuine issue of material fact without Ellenbecker’s testimony, the Court reversed the denial of summary judgment and rendered judgment in favor of Illinois Central. View "Illinois Central Railroad Company v. Jackson" on Justia Law

Lewis and Lisa Shelby filed a medical-malpractice action on behalf of the wrongful death beneficiaries of their son, Terrance Shelby. Shortly before trial, the trial judge dismissed the Shelbys for discovery violations, but he allowed Terrance’s brother, Demario Ferguson, to be substituted as the new wrongful-death plaintiff. After being substituted in the action, Ferguson admitted during his deposition that he previously had signed a false affidavit while the trial court was considering appropriate sanctions for the Shelbys’ conduct. The trial judge then dismissed the entire action. Ferguson appealed the dismissal, but finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Ferguson v. University of Mississippi Medical Center" on Justia Law

Expro Americas, LLC ("Expro") filed a complaint seeking, inter alia, a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Eddie Walters, a former Expro employee, and H&H Welding, LLC. Expro offered "oil and gas well and pipeline services," including providing "specially designed flaring products and services to pipeline transmission companies and refineries along the Gulf Coast." Expro's six-inch, trailer-mounted flare stacks were at the heart of this dispute. Eddie Walters was an Expro employee until August 5, 2013. Thereafter, Walters was employed by Clean Combustion, a competitor of Expro's that was created in 2013 by former Expro employees. Expro filed its application for a restraining order against H&H and Walters, alleging that both defendants stole the design for its flare stack. Expro specifically alleged that "[t]he information used to design and create the trailer-mounted flaring system is a ‘trade secret' of Expro's." Furthermore, it alleged breach of contract against H&H, claiming that the terms of Expro's purchase orders with H&H contained a "Proprietary Rights" section "in which H&H ‘warrants to keep all design, information, blueprints and engineering data with respect to the Goods confidential and to not make use of but to assign to Expro each invention, improvement and discovery relating thereto (whether or not patentable) conceived or reduced to practice in the performance of the Purchase Order by any person employed by or working under the directions of the Supplier Group.'" The trial court granted the restraining order, but after conducting an evidentiary hearing, the chancellor dissolved the temporary restraining order and found no facts to justify the issuance of a preliminary injunction. The chancellor awarded the defendants attorneys' fees and expenses in excess of the $5,000 injunction bond that Expro had posted. After determining that Expro's suit against H&H was meritless, the chancellor sua sponte dismissed H&H from the suit with prejudice. Expro appealed, and the Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part. The Court found that the chancellor did not err by awarding the defendants attorneys' fees and expenses, because Expro's application for a preliminary injunction was frivolous and was made in bad faith. However, the Court found the chancellor misapplied Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 4, and therefore erred by dismissing H&H from the suit with prejudice. View "Expro Americas, LLC v. Walters" on Justia Law

Hattiesburg High School (“HHS”) filed a complaint for injunctive relief against the Mississippi High School Activities Association (“MHSAA”), alleging that its decision to declare one of HHS’s students ineligible to participate in athletics was arbitrary and capricious. The Forrest County Chancery Court agreed, and it vacated the penalties that MHSAA had imposed against HHS. MHSAA appealed. Because the Supreme Court found that HHS failed to state a legally cognizable claim or cause of action, we vacate the decisions of the Forrest County Chancery Court. View "Mississippi High School Activities Association, Inc., v. Hattiesburg High School" on Justia Law