Top Mississippi Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

Matthew Feldman, 32, was a passenger being driven back to a work cabin by a co-worker who had been drinking. In heavy rain the driver hydroplaned at about 50 mph and hit a guardrail head-on. The rail went through the engine and into the passenger cab, pinning Feldman against the rear window. His right leg was amputated.

Jessie Lee Williams Jr., 40, a father of seven, was booked into the Harrison County Adult Detention Center in Gulfport on misdemeanor charges on February 4, 2006. In the booking room Sgt. Ryan Teel and other guards punched and kicked him while he was restrained, Tasered him, pepper-sprayed him through a spit mask, wrapped a soaked sheet over his face and beat him in a restraint chair. He was brain dead by February 6. Teel was sentenced to life. Harrison County settled the family's civil rights suit in July 2007 for $3,500,000.

On June 25, 2014 John Williams Jr., a certified crane operator at the VT Halter Marine shipyard in Pascagoula, was in the cab of a Manitowoc Model 16000 crawler crane during a three-crane lift of a ship's bow when the cranes began pulling apart and his tipped. The 18,000-pound steel counterweights stacked on its rear slid forward and struck the cab, throwing him eight feet head-first onto concrete. He survived, permanently incapacitated. A Gulfport jury found Manitowoc never warned operators that could happen and awarded $8,500,000; after fault was split 50/40/10 the judgment against Manitowoc was $3,400,000, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed in 2018.

On June 25, 2014 John Williams Jr., a certified crane operator at the VT Halter Marine shipyard in Pascagoula, was in the cab of a Manitowoc Model 16000 crawler crane during a three-crane lift of a ship's bow when the cranes began pulling apart and his tipped. The 18,000-pound steel counterweights stacked on its rear slid forward and struck the cab, throwing him eight feet head-first onto concrete. He survived, permanently incapacitated. A Gulfport jury found Manitowoc never warned operators that could happen and awarded $8,500,000; after fault was split 50/40/10 the judgment against Manitowoc was $3,400,000, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed in 2018.

On March 12, 2007 Michael Burnley, 23, was in his cell at the Hinds County jail in Raymond when another prisoner, John Earl Kennedy, jimmied the faulty lock on the door, got in, and repeatedly body-slammed him. Burnley was left paralyzed from mid-chest down. Sheriff Malcolm McMillin acknowledged the cell locks had been faulty since the jail opened in 1994, a fourteen-year-old defect that cost about $20,000 to fix. The county settled his Section 1983 suit on April 21, 2008 for $3,000,000.

Ellen Kelly died after latex exposure during surgery at Baptist Hospital in Jackson. A form from an earlier procedure at the same hospital already recorded her latex allergy. The jury found against the hospital and cleared the physicians, on the reasoning that the nurses and the doctors owed separate duties.

Lisa Learmonth was severely injured in August 2005 when a Sears van driven by a Sears employee collided with her vehicle. A federal jury returned a unanimous general verdict of $4 million without itemizing it, and that single choice set up a fight over Mississippi's damages cap that ran to the Fifth Circuit and the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Ashley Newton was driving behind an automobile-hauler trailer on U.S. Highway 49 when its driver drifted across into her lane without signalling. She fractured a cervical vertebra in two places, her hip, her knee, and her tibia and fibula in compound fractures, and needed numerous surgeries.

William Joel Dixon, 28, an insulin-dependent diabetic, was held in the George County Regional Correctional Facility in Lucedale in September 2014. For seven days he got no insulin. The jail nurse, Carmon Sue Brannan, dismissed his worsening condition as methamphetamine withdrawal. He died on September 24, 2014 of diabetic ketoacidosis. Brannan was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years. In June 2022 George County agreed to pay his estate, his mother and his children $2,750,000.

On June 27, 2008 Michael Keith Howard stepped out of his room at the InTown Suites extended-stay motel on the edge of Jackson to walk his dog. As he came back, three men burst through the door, hit him in the face with a handgun, held the gun to his partner Shannon Poole's head, and ransacked the room. Howard needed facial reconstructive surgery. The motel knew loiterers roamed the property, that its fence was in disrepair and that its room locks did not work. A Hinds County jury awarded Howard $2,000,000 and Poole a separate $2,000,000, and the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed both in 2011.

On June 27, 2008 three men burst into the room Shannon Poole shared with her partner Michael Keith Howard at the InTown Suites extended-stay motel on the edge of Jackson. One pistol-whipped Howard and then held the gun to Poole's head; another flipped the mattress with her on it and shoved her into a wall. She was left with contusions, lasting soreness and severe psychological injury. The motel knew loiterers roamed the property, that its fence was in disrepair and that its room locks did not work. A Hinds County jury awarded Poole $2,000,000 and Howard a separate $2,000,000, and the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed both in 2011.

Howard Barnett worked for a decade at Mississippi Steel and Iron, forty to sixty-five feet from sandblasting operations, in conditions he and a coworker both called extremely dusty. He developed silicosis. The claim was that the silica sand was defective because it came without adequate warnings about the danger of inhaling it.