March 24, 2006

In a series of cases, the Mississippi Supreme Court has emphatically announced an end to the wide leeway it once gave plaintiffs to drag defendants and controversies into a few favored rural county courts even when the underlying disputes bore little relation to those counties. One of the latest cases involves insurance agents from Claiborne, Amite, Lauderdale and Rankin Counties who all wanted to sue insurers in plaintiff-friendly Claiborne County; per an AP account, the Court said only the agent who actually lived in Claiborne County could sue there, and the others would have to go back to their home counties to file.