Justia Mississippi Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In October 2010, Clara Dees filed a medical malpractice suit against Heritage House Nursing Home and its employees and against River Region Medical Center and its employees. River Region was owned by Vicksburg Healthcare, LLC. Dees also filed, with her complaint, a certificate of consultation. Dees filed an amended complaint in January 2011, also accompanied by a certificate. No summonses were issued until after February 16, 2011, the same date Dees moved the court for an enlargement of time (which was granted). Dees issued a number of summonses from February 22 to March 3, 2011. In May, an agreed order staying the proceedings and compelling binding arbitration was entered concerning defendants Heritage House Nursing Home and its employees. Vicksburg Healthcare moved to set aside the order allowing additional time to serve process. Vicksburg Healthcare also moved to dismiss and, alternatively, moved for summary judgment, while also asserting its affirmative defenses and answering the amended complaint. In February 2012, Heritage House Nursing Home filed its motion to confirm the arbitrator’s ruling. Dees failed to submit a response, and failed to request additional time in which to respond, and did not request a continuance of the scheduled hearing. The circuit court confirmed the decision of the arbitrator, dismissing with prejudice all claims against Heritage House Nursing Home and its employees. Subsequently, a notice of service of discovery requests was filed by Vicksburg Healthcare in September of 2012. In December, Vicksburg Healthcare filed a motion to compel discovery and for sanctions, and shortly thereafter filed a new a motion for summary judgment on the basis that Dees had failed to designate any expert witness and had failed to provide expert-witness testimony to establish a prima facie case in support of her claim. Dees then responded, requesting that the motion for summary judgment be denied, and designating her expert. No affidavit signed by the expert was attached. The motion for summary judgment was heard by the circuit court in January 2013, and was denied based on Dees’s designation. The circuit court granted Dees an additional sixty days in which to provide a sworn affidavit of the expert’s testimony. The circuit court provided that Vicksburg Healthcare could renew its motion for summary judgment once the expert opinion had been submitted. Vicksburg Healthcare petitioned the Supreme Court for interlocutory appeal, arguing (1) that the trial court erred in denying its motion for summary judgment; and (2) that the trial court erred in granting Dees additional time to submit her expert's affidavit establishing her claim. The Supreme Court concluded the record was clear that the trial court erred in not granting Vicksburg Healthcare’s motion for summary judgment. The trial court was reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings. View "Vicksburg Healthcare, LLC v. Dees" on Justia Law

Jimmy Chism Jr. (Jim) challenged the termination of his parental rights to his son, Johnny. After review of the trial court record, the Supreme Court found that Jim’s parental rights were wrongfully terminated, it reversed the judgments of Court of Appeals and the chancery court and remanded this case back to the chancery court for further proceedings. View "Chism v. Chism Bright" on Justia Law

Anthony Carothers was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault and sentenced to consecutive twenty-year terms in the Mississippi Department of Corrections for each count. On direct appeal to the Court of Appeals, Carothers argued that the trial court erred by allowing the State to treat Sheena Carothers (Carothers’s half-sister and victim) as a hostile witness. Finding merit to Carothers’s argument, the Court of Appeals reversed his convictions and remanded for a new trial. The State petitioned for certiorari, arguing the Court of Appeals had misapprehended material facts, including testimony of other witnesses. After review, the Supreme Court found the Court of Appeals erred in reversing Carothers’s convictions and sentences. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was reversed, and the Circuit Court’s judgment of conviction and sentences were reinstated and affirmed. View "Carothers v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

This appeal stemmed from Amy Waites Ritchie's petition to modify a custody agreement created by Jeffrey Scott Waites (“Scott”) and herself following their divorce two years earlier. Amy petitioned for modification, seeking to move with her two children to Iowa, as Amy planned to remarry there. Although Amy and Scott had agreed to joint physical and legal custody, Amy’s proposed move to Iowa would make the provisions of the agreement unworkable. After initiating the petition, Amy contacted T.J. Sanford (“T.J.”) to let him know she believed him to be her eldest child’s biological father; a DNA test proved T.J.’s paternity and he joined the matter seeking custody. After excluding Scott from consideration as a non-natural parent, the chancellor awarded full physical and legal custody to Amy rather than T.J. The chancellor allowed visitation for both Scott and T.J., with respect to the eldest child. Scott appealed the court’s order, and the Court of Appeals reversed. Finding Scott’s fatherly actions did rebut the natural-parent presumption afforded to Amy and T.J., the Court of Appeals found Scott should have been considered on equal footing with the natural parents. The Court of Appeals remanded this case to the chancery court with instructions to consider Scott. Amy and T.J. appealed. The Supreme Court found, after review, that the chancellor properly excluded Scott from consideration under Albright v. Albright, 437 So. 2d 1003 (Miss. 1983).. Accordingly, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ decision and reinstated and affirmed the judgment of the chancery court. View "In the Interest of a Minor Victoria Denise Waites" on Justia Law

Charles William White (“Bill”) and his son Charles Thomas White (“Tommy”), were partners in a business that owned and operated convenience stores. In 2000, during the course of the partnership, Bill married Anita White. In 2005, Tommy bought his father’s share of the partnership for $42,600, but in dissolving the partnership, Bill and Tommy neglected to execute and file deeds transferring the partnership’s real property. In early 2009, Bill’s health declined rapidly, and Anita and Tommy began to clash over Bill’s healthcare. During this time, Tommy realized that he and his father had failed to execute deeds transferring the partnership’s real-property assets. Tommy used a durable power of attorney his father had given him years before to execute quit-claim deeds transferring the partnership property to himself. Bill and Anita continued to clash over who had authority to make healthcare decisions for Bill, so Tommy filed a petition for a conservatorship for his father’s benefit and sought appointment as his father’s conservator. Anita filed a counterclaim to challenge Tommy’s fitness to serve as his father’s conservator and sought to have Tommy return all assets he had transferred to himself using his father’s power of attorney. The chancellor agreed that a conservatorship was appropriate, but he appointed a third party as Bill’s conservator. Bill died in 2009, and at that time, the conservator filed a motion asking to be discharged from his duties and to be allowed to distribute the assets of the conservatorship to Bill’s estate. The parties agreed to an order discharging the conservator and to a distribution of funds held by the conservator to Bill’s estate. The chancellor’s order made no mention of Anita’s action to set aside the deed transfers. In 2010, Anita filed suit to set aside the quit-claim deeds and to redeem the real property Tommy had acquired using his father’s power of attorney. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The chancellor held that Anita’s action was barred by res judicata, granted Tommy’s motion, and denied Anita’s cross-motion. The Supreme Court found that the judgment dismissing the conservatorship was not a final judgment on the merits, and reversed. View "In the Matter of the Estate of Charles William White" on Justia Law

Tanya and Hobson Sanderson divorced after seventeen years of marriage. When Tanya and Hobson married in 1994, Tanya signed a prenuptial agreement the day before their marriage, and upon divorce, the chancellor enforced the terms of the agreement. Tanya appealed. She argued the prenuptial agreement was procedurally and substantively unconscionable. Furthermore, she argued that the chancellor erred in not finding a joint bank account contained commingled, marital property. Upon review, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court on its finding that the prenuptial agreement was not procedurally unconscionable. However, the Court reversed and remanded on whether the prenuptial agreement was substantively unconscionable. The Court also held that certain funds, used for familial purposes, kept in a joint bank account created after the marriage began, did not fall within the parameters of the prenuptial agreement. View "Sanderson v. Sanderson" on Justia Law

This appeal arose over a contract dispute between a yacht owner, an independent contractor hired to paint the yachts, and an unpaid paint supplier. The owner challenged a lien the unpaid paint supplier established and enforced on two multimilliondollar yachts under construction at the owner’s Gulfport shipyard. Upon review of the dispute, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the owner on a finding that privity did not exist between the owner and the unpaid paint supplier. View "In RE: Lien against M/Y Areti and M/Y Lady Linda: Trinity Yachts, LLC" on Justia Law

Following the Supreme Court’s reversal and remand of Harvey Williams' murder conviction, the Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith sought an order of nolle prosequi, which the circuit court granted. Two days later, and without notice to the accused, the judge sought to vacate his previously entered nolle prosequi order, “recuse” the district attorney, and transfer the case to the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office. A second circuit court judge found that the order of nolle prosequi was not subject to recision, but appointed the Attorney General’s Office as a special prosecutor in the place of the local district attorney, merely because the duly elected and serving local prosecutor had exercised his discretion not to prosecute Williams. The Supreme Court found that the involuntary disqualification of the local district attorney and the substitution of the Office of the Attorney General, over the objection of the local district attorney, were wholly unsupported by any constitutional, common law, or statutory authority of the State of Mississippi, and as such, reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Williams v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

In 2000, a grand jury indicted Rebecca Hentz for one count of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine and two counts of attempt to manufacture methamphetamine. Hentz pleaded guilty to one count of attempt to manufacture methamphetamine. The circuit court sentenced Hentz to thirty years, suspended, unsupervised probation, and a $5,000 fine. In 2012, Governor Haley Barbour granted Hentz a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon” for the attempt-to-manufacture-methamphetamine conviction. Later that year, Hentz filed a Motion to Expunge Record, claiming that the records of her conviction should be expunged because she had received a pardon. In 2013, Hentz filed an Amended Motion to Expunge Record, which included additional support for the contention that the records of her conviction should be expunged. The trial court denied her motion. Hentz then appealed to the Supreme Court, raising one issue on appeal: whether a convicted felon may have her criminal record expunged after receiving an executive pardon. Because there was no statutory authority in Mississippi for the courts to order an expungement under these circumstances, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s order denying the request for expungement. View "Hentz v. Mississippi" on Justia Law

In 1999 the County Court of Lauderdale County determined that Brian Bronk was the natural father of Margaret Hobson's minor child. In that same judgment, the court granted sole custody to Hobson. Soon after the child's birth, the county court entered a judgment ordering Bronk to pay child support to Hobson in the amount of $400 per month. In 2013, Bronk presented an ore tenus motion in which he contended that all of the orders and judgments related to child custody were invalid because the county court never had jurisdiction to determine custody in the first place. Upon review of this matter, the Supreme Court agreed: county courts do not have jurisdiction to make child custody determinations ab initio. Accordingly, the Court reversed the custody determination of the County Court of Lauderdale County and remanded the case to the county court with instructions to transfer the proceedings to chancery court. View "Bronk v. Hobson" on Justia Law