This products-liability case arose after plaintiff James Berry was injured when a bungee cord snapped and struck his eye while he attempted to secure a rented 250-pound groundsaw in his truck bed. Berry sued the manufacturer E-Z Trench for failure to warn about transport dangers and for defective design due to the lack of wheel-locking devices. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, holding that Berry failed to create a genuine issue of material fact on the essential element of proximate cause under the Mississippi Products Liability Act. The court further noted that the danger was open and obvious to the user, the product performed as expected, and no feasible design alternative would have prevented the harm.
This case involves an employment dispute in which plaintiff Antonio Neshell Weakley Myers alleged she faced a sexually hostile work environment and was discharged in retaliation for opposing harassment while working at the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel. She brought claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and 1985, various constitutional provisions, and state law after exhausting administrative remedies. The defendant moved for summary judgment, arguing it was not a statutory employer under Title VII because it is limited by statute to fewer than fifteen employees and that the remaining claims failed as a matter of law. The court granted the motion as to all federal claims, finding that the office's employee limit precluded Title VII coverage, that § 1983 and related claims were barred because the office is an arm of the state entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity, and that other federal claims lacked a private cause of action or were otherwise deficient. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over any remaining state-law claims.
This case involves a Jackson police officer, Robert Michael Watts, who alleged that he was transferred from a daytime downtown patrol assignment to a more dangerous graveyard shift at Precinct 2 after being interviewed by the FBI about potential illegal activity by then-Mayor Frank Melton; he sued the City of Jackson and several individual officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for First Amendment retaliation. The court considered the defendants' motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). It held that the federal claims survive against the city but that the individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on the claims against them in their personal capacities, because existing precedent did not clearly establish that an officer's cooperation with an outside FBI investigation of a superior constitutes protected citizen speech under Garcetti v. Ceballos rather than speech pursuant to official duties.
This case involves an appeal from a bankruptcy court order in a dispute over property conveyances by a Mississippi limited liability company. Kinwood Capital Group, L.L.C. was formed to develop land, but an unauthorized member conveyed the property to another entity he controlled, which then obtained loans secured by deeds of trust from BankPlus; after default, Kinwood challenged the transactions in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court ruled the original deeds and BankPlus's deeds of trust void ab initio, and the district court affirmed after reviewing the matter de novo. The court held that under the Mississippi Limited Liability Company Act, an LLC member's unauthorized conveyance does not bind the company and passes no title, even to a subsequent bona fide purchaser, based on the statute's plain language and analogies to Mississippi forgery and unauthorized-act precedents. BankPlus's alternative equitable-lien argument was deemed waived for not being raised below.
This case was a commercial contract dispute between motor carrier KLLM and shipper Watson Pharma over the applicable liability limit for a truckload of stolen pharmaceutical cargo. The court granted KLLM's motion for partial summary judgment and denied the cross-motion by Watson and its insurer, ruling that KLLM's liability was contractually capped at $100,000 per occurrence. The decision rested on the plain language of the Transportation Agreement, including Paragraph IX's released evaluation provision tying rates to a $100,000 limit, the renegotiated Appendix B rate schedules that explicitly stated the same cap and were signed by both parties, and evidence that the agreed rates were calculated based on that limitation.
This case involves a breach of contract dispute where F.L. Crane & Sons sued IKBI in Mississippi state court for unpaid subcontract work related to Hurricane Katrina repairs. IKBI filed a third-party complaint against Kellogg Brown & Root Services, which then removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction. The court granted the motions by Crane and IKBI to remand the case back to state court. The core reasoning was that third-party defendants like Kellogg are not permitted to remove under 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a), and exceptions allowing removal after severance or dismissal of the original claim did not apply because the original plaintiff's claim remained active and conditional.
procedurebusiness & regulatory
Affiliations
District Court, S.D. Mississippi — appointed by George W. Bush