No Class Actions in Mississippi
May 21, 2018 § 1 Comment
The MSSC entered an order en banc on May 17, 2018, denying a motion to adopt a class-action rule. The order, signed by Presiding Justice Randolph, reads in its entirety as follows:
Now before the en banc Court is the Motion to Amend Rule 23 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure, filed by Richard T. Phillips.
Phillips proposed amending Rule 23 to provide a class-action procedure in Mississippi. The motion was posted for comment from May 16, 2017, to October 2, 2017. Numerous comments were filed by individuals, law firms, businesses, and organizations.
The motion was also referred to this Court’s Advisory Committee on Rules. The Committee’s minutes reflect that, after careful consideration, it voted (with one member abstaining) not to recommend adoption of the proposed amendments [sic] to Rule 23.
After due consideration, we find the motion should be denied.
The court then ordered that the motion be denied. Waller, Randolph, Coleman, Maxwell, Beam, Chamberlin, and Ishee voted to deny. Kitchens and King voted to grant.
Before I am flooded with comments along the lines of “Mississippi is the only state without a class-action rule,” and “We are out of step again,” let me point out that I am a member of the MSSC’s Advisory Committee on Rules, and have been since 2010. The committee membership includes plaintiffs’ and defense lawyers, an assistant AG, a public defender, 2 each circuit and chancery judges, a county-court judge, and an appellate judge. I am on the subcommittee that exhaustively studied the proposal, including reading scholarly articles on the subject and studies of other states’ rules. We even interviewed proponents of each side of the debate, something we have not done before during my time on the committee. The proposal was discussed in depth. The unanimous conclusion of the subcommittee (with one abstention) was that the federal Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) has had the effect of making almost all class-action suits removable to federal court, obviating the need for a state rule. The full committee voted unanimously (with one abstention) that the proposed rule not be adopted.
The Better Chancery Practice Blog 
[…] Judge Primeaux’s blog post on Monday explains why enacting Rule 23 was not popular. He states: […]