Rule Amendment

The Mississippi Supreme Court amended Rule 802 of the Mississippi Rules of Evidence.  The order is located here.  The amendment links up with Rule 32 of the Mississippi Rules of Evidence to now allow the testimony of a medical doctor to be admissible without his or her presence in Court. 

Understaffing

Be careful about the dangers of understaffing.  A complaint was recently filed in Jackson against a law firm stating a claim for understaffing which allegedly resulted in a missed statute of limitations.  A link to the complaint is here. 

Custody and Visitation

On Tuesday, the Mississippi Court of Appeals decided Campbell v. Watts located here.  This was a case I got involved in post trial.  The Court of Appeals reversed and rendered the trial court's ruling on custody.  There is some good reading in the opinion on the standards to modify visitation as opposed to custody that is worth reading.  I normally plead modification of visitation as an alternative in modification of custody cases under the right set of facts.  Since the case is still pending, my general practice is not to elaborate more fully in posts.   

Tort for Private Organization

Last week, the Mississippi Supreme Court decided  Miss. High School Activities Assoc. v. Hattiesburg High School.   The case centered on whether relief was available in court over a decision of a private voluntary organization.    The Mississippi Supreme Court said no and found that:

"Nowhere in its complaint does HHS allege a breach of contract, a tort, fraud, or any other legally cognizable claim. Contrary to the dissents’ position, there simply is no cause of action for “arbitrariness,” in the absence of a contractual provision or some other legal duty requiring otherwise. For example, MHSAA could decide arbitrarily to paint all of its office doors chartreuse, but unless some contractual provision or other legal duty mandates otherwise, no cause of action arises. As such, HHS’s complaint for injunctive relief was not “predicated upon some legal or equitable claim which will, at some point, proceed to the merits,” and therefore was not within the Forrest County Chancery Court’s jurisdiction. In Re Bell, 962 So. 2d at 541."

Testimony Does Not Equal Proof

I heard an interesting comment last week which is so true to some degree.  The general comment was that testimony does not equal proof.  In the context, it dealt with accusations by one party against another with no proof other than the testimony.  Soon thereafter, there was testimony that denied all of the prior testimony.  The lesson here is that anyone can say anything.  Without some other proof, testimony alone may not be enough. 

Standing Mediation

The more I do domestic cases in Mississippi, the more I believe it may be time to look into a standing mediation order.  Many times issues start to narrow before trial.  The problem is that many times the issues could have been greatly narrowed a long time before then saving the parties a lot of time and money.  This is particularly true on property issues. 

Hugging Suit

There has been some press recently over a family member suing a child for hugging her which resulted in her falling.   This apparently resulted in some broken bones.  There is an article at Lowering the Bar on it located here.  To me, this is a case with absolutely no jury appeal whatsoever.