Opinion ID: 1684777
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Class actions in Mississippi

Text: ¶ 37. Mississippi is the only state that permits no class actions of any kind, whether through common or statutory law. Richard T. Phillips, Class Action & Joinder in Mississippi, 71 Miss. L.J. 447, 453 (2001). [8] It has been theorized that Mississippi coped with the absence of a codified Rule 23 in three ways: (1) the mass aggregation of individual claims under Rules 20 and 42 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, (2) the `ancient equitable remedy' of the `equitable class action' and (3) where all else fails, the prosecution of select individual cases for punitive damages. Id. at 455. ¶ 38. The majority is correct when it writes that the text of Federal Rule 20 and our state Rule 20 are almost exactly the same, for we patterned our Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure after the Federal Rules. See Owens v. Thomae, 759 So.2d 1117, 1121 n. 2 (Miss.1999). Yet the federal Rule 20 never underwent the evolution that our rule emerged from, for there was always a federal class action rule to handle large groups of parties with common interests. The application of Rule 20 expanded over the past two decades to fill the void from the lack of a class action rule. Our Rule 20 has long been used in lieu of a class action rule. ¶ 39. In 1833, just a little over a decade after Mississippi was admitted to the Union, the first provision for group litigation in federal courts was set forth as Equity Rule 48. Deborah Hensler, Nicholas Pace, Bonita Dombey-Moore, Beth Giddens, Jennifer Gross, & Erik Moller, Class Action Dilemmas 10 (2000). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were first adopted a little over a century later, in 1938, and included the ancestor of the current class action rule. Id. at 11. ¶ 40. Traditionally, Mississippi allowed class actions in equity. See Marx v. Broom, 632 So.2d 1315, 1322 (Miss.1994) (noting that [p]rior to the enactment of the Rules of Civil Procedure, this Court recognized the possibility of class action suits as a matter of general equity jurisdiction in chancery court under limited circumstances); Virgil Griffith, Mississippi Chancery Practice, § 130 (2000); Jeffrey Jackson, Mary Miller, Ronald Morton, & Justin Matheny, Class Actions, 2 Miss. Prac. Enc. § 13:59 (2001); [9] T. Jackson Lyons, Derivative Actions, 22 Miss. Prac. Enc. § 22:222 (2001); Phillips, at 455; Geoffrey Miller & Lori Singer, Nonpecuniary Class Action Settlements, 60 Law & Contemp. Probs. 97, 146 (1997); Kurt A. Schwarz, Note, Due Process and Equitable Relief in State Multistate Class Actions after Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 68 Tex. L.Rev. 415, 450 n. 84 (1989). These suits were abolished when we adopted our own rules of civil procedure in 1982. Am. Bankers Ins. Co. of Fl. v. Booth, 830 So.2d 1205, 1211 (Miss.2002). ¶ 41. It is no wonder that a type of super-joinder arose under our Rule 20. Plaintiffs in our state courts were forbidden from invoking any sort of class action, and so joinder slowly grew to encompass the massive and unwieldy actions the majority rightfully struggles with today. We have always wrestled with defining the scope of permissive joinder. From the very moment we adopted the rule we displayed ambivalence, announcing that [j]oinder of parties under Rule 20(a) is not unlimited, while only a few sentences later stating that [t]he general philosophy of the joinder provisions of these rules is to allow unlimited joinder.... Miss. R. Civ. P. 20 cmt. ¶ 42. For too long our Rule 20 has been stretched and pulled in various directions, and forced to accomplish tasks it was never designed to do. The majority today does not ameliorate that unfortunate situation. It is imperative that we modernize our rules of civil procedure by adopting a class action provision. This is completely in accordance with our recent desire to modernize, as shown by the amendment of Miss. R. Evid. 702 (adhering to the Daubert standard over Frye ) and the adoption of Miss. R. Civ. P. 35 (allowing the physical and mental examination of parties to a case). ¶ 43. There are multiple ways we could approach this problem, but we do not solve it when we refuse to address it. The majority opinion does not cure the ills of Rule 20, but only starts them on a new course of treatment. In this electronic millennium we must face the fact that multiple plaintiffs might have an identical cause of action against a defendant. We must deal with that potentiality in a just manner, coupled with due process for both defendants and plaintiffs. Despite the assurances of the majority that this opinion does not disturb the settled law of our state, trial judges and attorneys have little guidance to determine when defendants should be severed for lack of relation.