Mississippi Injury Lawyer Blog

The mother of Todd Brown, a 14 year old middle school student who was shot and killed at school Feb. 5, 2010, has filed a lawsuit against the young man's accused shooter, the shooter's parents and various school officials. The complaint was filed earlier this month in the Madison County Circuit Court by the family's attorney, Birmingham attorney Erik Heninger.

At the time of the shooting, Todd was a student at discovery Middle School, in Madison County, Alabama. The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Towanda Moore, Todd's mother, seeks unspecified damages against the Madison County Board of Education, Madison Superintendent Dee Fowler, Hammad Memon, who has been charged with Brown's murder, Memon's parents, Iqbal and Safia Memon, and other unnamed defendants. The lawsuit also names current Discovery Middle School Principal Robbie Smith. Even though Smith was serving at another Madison school at the time of the shooting, the complaint filed my Todd's mother alleges that Smith's negligent actions lead to Todd's wrongful death. Sharon Willis, who is now the at-risk coordinator for Madison City Schools, was the Discovery principal at the time of the shooting.

The lawsuit alleges that school officials and Memon's parents knew he was a discipline problem and emotionally troubled. The lawsuit alleges that system officials were negligent in allowing Memon to make an out-of-zone transfer from Liberty Middle School to Discovery Middle School. The suit contends there are "several student accounts of Memon bringing a gun to Discovery Middle School campus several times prior to the gunning down of Todd Brown."

According to AL.com, Memon was also 14 at the time of Brown's shooting, now faces a murder charge and is scheduled to go on trial as an adult on June 18. Memon is being defended by attorney Bruce Gardner in the criminal case. Gardner said he will not be handling the civil case and does not know who the family will retain because he has not talked with them since the lawsuit was filed. Gardner did say he would expect the civil attorney to "not allow depositions to go forward until the criminal case is over."

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When parents send their children to school, it is expected that school officials will do everything in their power to ensure the protection of their children. One Tennessee mother claims that this is exactly what she expected of her local school district, but this protection was not afforded to her daughter. Christina McDonald is alleging, in a lawsuit against Sumner County Tennessee Board of Education, that the county school board is partly liable for the wrongful death of her daughter, Alexis Thompson.

Christina McDonald is filing suit against the county school board, but not for the reasons that one might think. The death of her daughter did not occur on school grounds, nor did it occur as a result of a tragic accident associated with a school function. Alexis Thompson died in an auto accident, as a passenger in a truck driven by her step father, Dusty McDonald. At the time of the accident, Dusty McDonald was intoxicated. Seeing that Alexis died as a result of an auto accident, in which her father was the driver, the question is: how is the school board liable?

In her lawsuit against the Sumner County Board of Education, Christina McDonald is alleging that the school system is responsible for her daughter's death because they allowed Alexis to leave her school with her father, who came to pick her up, visibly intoxicated. According to The Tennessean, Alexis Thompson, who was a third grader at Benny Bills Elementary School, was killed March 8 after leaving an after school program with her stepfather, Dusty McDonald. The Tennessean reports that according to authorities, Dusty McDonald went to the school after drinking all day to pick up Alexis after he realized that she had not been brought home by the bus.

After picking up Alexis, Dusty McDonald crashed his pickup truck into a tree after losing control of his truck while rounding a curve in the road. Also according to authorities, Dusty McDonald fled the scene of the auto accident on foot, leaving Alexis trapped and seriously injured in the truck. Alexis was later pronounced dead at Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, Tennessee. In September, Dusty McDonald pled guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of an accident involving a death, and a fifth offense of driving on a revoked license as a result of Alexis's death. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

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Many of us remember the anthrax attacks that began shortly after the September 11, 2001 tragedy. These attacks struck fear in the heart of many Americans because at the time the attacker was unknown, and it was speculated that Al-Queda was responsible for this biological hazard as well as for the September 11th attacks. Last month, the United States government agreed to settle a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of the first victim of the 2001 anthrax attacks. The settlement amount agreed upon was 2.5 million dollars. According to the Washington Post, documents filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, show that the Justice Department agreed to the settlement but did not admit liability in the death of Robert Stevens.

Robert Stevens, the first victim of the 2001 anthrax attacks, was a tabloid editor, who worked for American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer Sun, Globe and other tabloids. According to the New York Times, Stevens, who at the time was 62, died on October 5, 2001, just days after inhaling anthrax spores which were contained in a letter that had been delivered to his place of work. According to the Washington Post, after Stevens death, federal officials initially believed that Al-Queda was the culprit behind these biological attacks. However, the F.B.I. soon began to focus on the possibility that an American biodefense insider was behind the attacks. Four other people died and 17 others were sickened in similar letter attacks, which the FBI concluded were perpetrated by Dr. Bruce Ivins, a Fort Detrick scientist, who committed suicide after he became the subject of investigations.

The Washington Post reports that in their suit against the U.S. Government, which was filed in 2003 and initially sought 50 million dollars, Stevens widow, Maureen, his son and two daughters accused the government of negligence in his death because it engaged in the "ultra-hazardous activity" of experimenting with anthrax bacteria at Fort Detrick. Also according to the lawsuit, officials knew "that the potential harm was likely to be great, namely, the cause of human death."

According to the family's attorney, Richard D. Schuler, documents and testimony showed minimal vetting of government scientists who worked with anthrax and other pathogens, weak laboratory security and haphazard inventory controls before 2001. Mr. Schuler stated: "What we found was a horror show, basically. There was a serious potential danger to society from a biological attack as a result of either an insider or outsider getting access to these lethal organisms."

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It was 2010 and the first day of formal off-season workouts when 20 year old Bennie Abram collapsed on the field. He had the sickle cell trait, but he wanted to play football, in fact he was pretty good at it, and the university staff and employees had been made aware of his situation. In fact, as of 2009, the NCAA made it a requirement that all athletes be tested for the trait. Although being a carrier does not bar athletes from playing, it allows the NCAA to mandate slow and gradual preseason conditioning training.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, Abram's family alleges in a wrongful death suit that "the first day of workouts was 'carelessly and recklessly excessive'" and that Abram himself had not been notified of his test results - a decision, they assert, that prevented him from taking necessary precautions to keep from overexerting himself. The sickle cell trait appears most often in members of the African-American population, with nearly 10 percent being diagnosed and between one in 2,000 to one in 10,000 diagnoses in Caucasians.

Named in the suit are the University of Mississippi, the football coach and the NCAA. Mississippi lawyers know that this certainly isn't the first time that a family has sought to hold a school responsible for the untimely death of an athlete. Most of those cases involve heat stroke and overexertion. This particular case will be unique if simply for the fact that it also involves not only alleged negligence at practice on the part of the coaches and medical response team but also involves medical disclosure, and the added failure of the NCAA to fully disclose to a player his own medical condition. Although unique in that sense, statistics show that this isn't the first such case.

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On September 6, 2011, Winston J. Thompson III, a wrongful death attorney with the Cochran Firm in Jackson, Mississippi, in conjunction with the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a wrongful death suit against seven Rankin County, Mississippi teens. The suit, which was filed on behalf of the family of James C. Anderson, a Jackson, Mississippi man, alleges that the teens are liable for actual and punitive damages as a result of their involvement in the death of Mr. Anderson.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, the lawsuit claims that sever whit teenagers set out on a mission one night to Jackson, Mississippi. The lawsuit claims that the purpose of the teens' mission was to assault an African-American. The complaint goes on to state: "They found Mr. Anderson, a black man, in a parking lot in Jackson. Several teenagers took turns beating him for an extended period of time, and then one of the teenagers drove over Mr. Anderson with a Ford F-250 truck." The seven teens that the complaint alleges are responsible for the fatal attack of Mr. Anderson are: Deryl Dedmon Jr., John Aaron Rice, William Kirk Montgomery, Sarah Graves, Shelbie Richards, John Blaylock and Dylan Butler.

This lawsuit stems out of the death of Mr. Anderson, which occurred on June 26, 2011. The facts surrounding Mr. Anderson's death were revealed to the world by CNN in their recent television report. See the CNN report of the incident below. Please be advised, this video depicts violent actions. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

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