Justia Mississippi Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Scott Buras and Carlos Rodriguez founded Lagniappe Logistics in 2004. Since then, Buras and Rodriguez’s business relationship deteriorated to the point that Buras left the company in June 2013. In early 2014, Buras filed suit claiming that Rodriguez had been unjustly enriched through Lagniappe’s operation. Buras’s complaint requested that the chancellor declare Buras a fifty-percent owner of Lagniappe, order an accounting, judicially dissolve the company, and appoint a receiver or custodian to wind up its affairs. Rodriguez and Lagniappe moved to dismiss Buras’s complaint based on Mississippi’s catch-all, three-year statute of limitations. According to the defendants, Buras’s claims (which depended on Buras’s status as an owner) were time-barred because Buras failed to file a legal action to rescind or cancel a 2006 agreement transferring his ownership interest to Rodriguez within three years of the agreement’s execution. "Occasionally, the question of whether the statute of limitations has run turns on the resolution of a fact question. In such cases, a statute-of-limitations defense cannot be resolved on a defendant’s motion to dismiss based on Mississippi Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)." The chancellor found it inappropriate to dismiss the case at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage due to an existing fact question and denied the motion. Finding no reversible error with that decision, the Supreme Court affirmed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Lagniappe Logistics, Inc. v. Buras" on Justia Law

Minor Tamarcus Ewing and his mother were involved in a motor-vehicle accident. Tamarcus sustained severe injuries and his mother died. Tommy Lee Ewing, Tamarcus’s father, was appointed guardian of Tamarcus’s person and estate. Tommy filed a negligence complaint on behalf of Tamarcus. At some point, the parties settled the circuit-court case. The Chancery Court sealed the guardianship case file on stipulation and agreement of the parties and attorneys of record in the circuit-court action. Then in 2010, the chancellor removed Tommy as guardian of Tamarcus’s estate after finding that seventy-five thousand dollars in annuity payments had been redirected from a frozen guardianship account into an unfrozen account jointly owned by Tommy and Tamarcus. The court also found that Tommy had spent those funds without court approval. Chokwe Lumumba and Roy Perkins were appointed as coguardians of the estate. Tommy was not removed as the guardian of Tamarcus’s person. Tommy later sought a copy of the sealed settlement documents after he had been removed as guardian. The chancellor denied his request. But because he had access to those documents as guardian and participated in the settlement process, no purpose was served by keeping the sealed documents from him. So, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded with instructions for the chancellor to grant him access to the documents. View "Ewing, Jr. v. Neese" on Justia Law

Lamarcus Jones was indicted for the 2008 shooting death of Marveo Lane. Mareno Hubbard testified that Lamarcus Jones was the shooter. Jones received a life sentence. After Jones' conviction and sentence, Hubbard pled guilty to manslaughter and was given a sentence of twenty years, with eight years suspended and credit for time served. There were three mistrials in this case. On appeal of his eventual conviction, Jones raised five issues challenging trial court procedure and his resulting conviction and sentence. "Finding Jones’s assignments of error to be unavailing," the Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence. View "Jones v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

An employee of NTC Transportation, Inc. (“NTC”) filed petitions with the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission (“the Commission”), claiming he had suffered compensable work-related injuries on two occasions. AmFed National Insurance Co. (“Amfed”), believing NTC’s workers’ compensation coverage to have lapsed due to NTC’s failure to timely pay the premium, responded and denied both liability and coverage as to the latter injury. AmFed’s denial of coverage was litigated and culminated in a judgment rendered in NTC’s favor. Based on the applicable law and particular facts of this case, the Supreme Court found that NTC had no insurance coverage with AmFed in effect at the time of the relevant injury. Accordingly, the Court reversed and remanded. View "Amfed National Insurance Co. v. NTC Transportation, Inc." on Justia Law

Death-row inmate Anthony Carr raised an Eighth Amendment challenge to this conviction for the deaths of Carl Bobbie Jo Parker and the Parkers' two children. Their feet and ankles were bound, and their wrists were tied behind their backs. Nine-year-old Charlotte was found naked from the waist down under her dress, and there was evidence of sexual battery (both vaginally and anally). The Circuit Court found that Carr had failed to prove that he was "intellectually disabled" within the purvey of the Eighth Amendment. After review, the Supreme Court reversed the circuit judge’s ruling and remanded this case for new factual findings because the court concluded the circuit court applied an incorrect legal standard when it ruled previously. View "Carr v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

Defendant Gregory Colburn was convicted by jury on two counts of exploitation of a vulnerable person. Colburn met Ruby Frances Hill in 1990 when he began servicing her burial-insurance policy; Colburn would visit the policyholders’ houses each month to collect the premiums. In October 2011, Hill executed a general power of attorney and an advanced healthcare directive, naming Colburn as her agent in both documents. Both documents were notarized, and the notary testified that Hill knew what she was doing when she executed them. In January 2012, Hill moved into Heritage House, an assisted-living facility in Rankin Count, sometime after she was diagnosed with dementia. Colburn was with Hill when she opened a joint checking account at Community Bank in April 2012. Hill wrote several large checks to Colburn in 2012, ranging from around $3,000 to more than $52,000. She also moved $125,000 from a Trustmark account into the joint checking account she shared with Colburn and ultimately closed that Trustmark account. Trustmark officials came across these transactions when they were investigating Hill’s account for an unrelated issue having to do with a Social Security check. Trustmark notified the Attorney General’s Office, which in turn initiated an investigation. After the investigation, a Rankin County grand jury indicted Colburn on three counts of exploitation of a vulnerable person. The trial court sentenced him to twenty years: ten years on each count, running consecutively. Colburn now appeals and argues that the exploitation statute was unconstitutionally vague, that his indictment should have been quashed, that the State failed to present sufficient evidence to support his convictions, and that his defense was hampered by the judge’s evidentiary rulings. Finding no reversible error, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed. View "Colburn v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

Linde Health Care Staffing, Inc., received a favorable arbitration award in Missouri against the Claiborne County Hospital. Linde reduced the award to a Missouri judgment, then enrolled the foreign judgment in two Mississippi counties. The Hospital successfully moved to set aside the foreign judgment in both Mississippi counties, since it never contracted with Linde and, thus, was not bound by the contract’s arbitration agreement. On appeal, Linde argued the Hospital’s motions to set aside the foreign judgment were filed too late and were time-barred by the Federal Arbitration Act’s procedural rules. After review, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that the FAA could not bind an entity that neither agreed to arbitrate nor contracted with the arbitration claimant. Therefore the Court affirmed the two Mississippi judgments setting aside the enrollment of the foreign judgment. View "Linde Health Care Staffing, Inc. v. Claiborne County Hospital" on Justia Law

While visiting the DeSoto County Civic Center, Cynthia Crider stepped in a hole that was obscured by grass. She was attending a high-school graduation at the Civic Center, operated by the DeSoto County Convention and Visitors Bureau. At the ceremony’s conclusion, Crider exited the Civic Center and proceeded across a grassy area to her car. As she crossed, Crider stepped in a hole obscured by overgrown grass. She fell and broke her ankle. Crider sued the Bureau, alleging that it failed to maintain the grassy area in a safe condition. The Bureau moved for summary judgment, claiming it enjoyed Mississippi Code Section 11-46-9(1)(v)’s immunity from certain premises-liability claims. In granting summary judgment, the trial judge reasoned that the Bureau enjoyed discretionary-function immunity because no statute mandated that it operate a civic center and because Crider failed to show any “laws or regulations . . . which would remove the Defendants’ particular acts (or inaction) from the ‘umbrella of discretionary function immunity.’” Crider appealed. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Crider v. DeSoto County Convention & Visitors Bureau" on Justia Law

Perry Armstead was convicted of two counts of sale of cocaine and was sentenced as a habitual offender and subsequent drug offender to thirty-two years’ imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Armstead appealed, arguing that the was denied his constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him. Finding no error, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Armstead’s convictions and sentences. View "Armstead v. State of Mississippi" on Justia Law

In January 1993, four days before his trial for the unrelated charges of aggravated assault and rape was set to begin, Charles Crawford broke into the home of Kristy Ray, kidnapped her, left a ransom note, and took her to a secluded barn in the woods. Crawford then raped and killed her. He claimed to have had two blackouts, one immediately before abducting Kristy, and one before her death. Crawford described everything he claims he could remember and that after he awoke from the second blackout, Kristy was dead at his feet. Crawford said he must have killed Kristy, but he could not remember doing so. He told the investigators that he sometimes had blackouts and could not control himself. This matter went before the Mississippi Supreme Court on Crawford’s Application for Leave to File Successive Petition for Post-Conviction Relief attacking his conviction for capital murder and death sentence. Also before the Court was the Response by the State and Crawford’s pro se Application for Leave to File Successive Petition for Post-Conviction Relief. After review, the Court concluded Crawford showed neither first PCR counsel nor trial counsel was deficient, nor has he shown prejudice due to any of the alleged errors raised in his appeal. The Court therefore denied both Crawford’s application for leave to proceed and his pro se application for leave. View "Crawford v. Mississippi" on Justia Law