Mississippi Litigation Review & Commentary : Mississippi Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Phillip W. Thomas Law Firm : MS Litigation Review & Commentary

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The Sun Herald is running this article regarding out-of-state lawyers soliciting clients for lawsuits over the Gulf Oil Spill. The leader of the Mississippi Association for Justice is asking Attorney General Jim Hood to investigate:

 We have heard numerous stories of businesses along the Mississippi Gulf Coast that are getting as many as half a dozen phone calls per hour from out-of-state law firms,” the organization’s president, Steve Mullins, said in a letter to Hood. Mullins said trial lawyers’ associations in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas support the call for an investigation.

“We’ve all collectively had enough of this,” Mullins said in an interview with the Sun Herald. “You can’t just come into this state and just represent people willy-nilly. It’s illegal. It’s unethical.”

Mullins told the Sun Herald the problem of illegal solicitations has grown since Katrina, when unethical attorneys stationed private investigators and other runners on the Coast to solicit clients.

“This is widespread,” he said. Under professional rules of conduct, attorneys are not supposed to solicit cases. Also, it is a misdemeanor violation of state statute to practice law in Mississippi without a state license. 

Out-of-state lawyers running cases in Mississippi is nothing new. I remember a conversation that I had over ten years ago with former Mississippi Bar President David Smith (deceased in 1998) in which he lamented the practice and talked about how bad it was for Mississippians. It’s probably gotten worse since then. 

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The New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting that the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has instituted an MDL proceeding in New Orleans for all Chinese Drywall cases pending in federal court. The presiding judge will be Judge Eldon Fallon, who also presided over the Vioxx MDL. Chinese drywall cases involve homes built with drywall containing sulfur, which smells horrible.

In most cases defendants like having an MDL and plaintiffs hate it. While the litigation may be more efficient in an MDL from a global perspective, it usually slows down individual cases. I previously posted about a Chinese Drywall class action filed in Mississippi by Ocean Springs attorney Steve Mullins in this post. The Times-Picayune article did not mention any Mississippi cases, but all federal court cases will be transferred to the MDL. 

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The Sun-Herald has a story today on a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Gulfport alleging defects in drywall installed in homes. Steve Mullins of Ocean Springs filed the case on behalf of Christopher Whitfield of Picayune. The case is a class action and the class is defined as all persons who own a home in the State of Mississippi which was built using Defendants' drywall. Here is a copy of the Complaint, which I obtained from Steve Mullins.

The case appears to be based on similar cases filed in Florida.

The lawsuit charges that many homes in Mississippi also contain the drywall and it names “Knauf Gips, Knauf Tianjin and Taishan, and possibly other unknown Chinese manufacturers” as defendants.

In class-action lawsuits the company has been accused with others of selling a faulty product that has allegedly affected tens of thousands of homeowners, predominantly in Florida. Some have complained of respiratory problems, electronic devices inexplicably breaking down and a strong odor like rotting eggs in their homes, indicative of the release of sulfur. The sulfur smell is usually present, along with black deposits in bare copper wires, black deposits on the HVAC copper, changes to finishes on mirrors, pitting of chrome and other objects and light switches that pop or have visible discharges.

Living in a home with a constant sulfur smell would be horrible. This could turn into a big piece of litigation depending on the number of homes in Mississippi with the drywall and whether the Chinese manufacturer actively defends the case.