Mississippi Casualty Study Guide

Mississippi scatters its casualty law across four titles of the code, so a candidate who hunts for it all in Title 83 comes up short. And the state’s signature rule is a coverage that does not exist here: Mississippi has no separate underinsured motorist coverage.

The auto minimums live in Title 63

Compulsory limits come from the Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Law at Miss. Code Ann. §63-15-3(j) — Title 63, Motor Vehicles and Traffic Regulations, not Title 83. The numbers are 25/50/25: $25,000 bodily injury per person, $50,000 per occurrence, $25,000 property damage. Keep it in mind; the UM statute borrows its floor from it.

Uninsured motorists — a written rejection that carries forward

Under Miss. Code Ann. §83-11-101(1) UM is mandatory unless the coverage is rejected “in writing.” Silence does not decline it.

Then the part candidates lose: the rejection carries forward on its own. “Unless the named insured requests such coverage in writing, such coverage need not be provided in any renewal policy, any replacement policy with the same or substantially similar terms,” or any policy transferred to a licensed affiliate. To get UM back, the insured must ask in writing.

The floor is the Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Law limits; UM may be raised only “to limits not to exceed those provided in the policy of bodily injury liability insurance of the insured.” UM can never exceed your own bodily injury limits — so an insured who buys minimum liability has almost no underinsured protection available to him.

UM property damage is required on policies issued or delivered after 1 January 1980, and §83-11-101(2) allows “an exclusion for the first Two Hundred Dollars ($200.00).” The election runs one way: under §83-11-101(3) you may reject UMPD and keep UM bodily injury, but never keep UMPD without UMBI. Under §83-11-101(4) a Department-approved form is required, and a signed rejection presumes “an informed, knowing rejection and waiver.”

Underinsurance is a clause, not a coverage

There is nothing separate to sell, select, reject or price. Underinsurance is only clause (iii) of the definition of an “uninsured motor vehicle,” §83-11-103(c)(iii): “An insured motor vehicle, when the liability insurer of such vehicle has provided limits of bodily injury liability for its insured which are less than the limits applicable to the injured person provided under his uninsured motorist coverage.”

Read the comparison closely: underinsurance is measured against the injured person’s own UM limits, not the compulsory minimums. That is why the ceiling on UM bites.

Pure comparative negligence — no bar at any percentage

Miss. Code Ann. §11-7-15, in Title 11, Civil Practice and Procedure: “In all actions hereafter brought for personal injuries, or where such injuries have resulted in death, or for injury to property, the fact that the person injured, or the owner of the property, or person having control over the property may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery, but damages shall be diminished by the jury in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the person injured, or the owner of the property, or the person having control over the property.”

No 50% bar. No 51% bar. A claimant 99% at fault still recovers 1%. Most comparative states run a modified version with a cut-off, so candidates trained elsewhere answer this wrong — confidently.

Workers’ compensation — five workers, 66-2/3%, and 450 weeks

Miss. Code Ann. §71-3-5 (Title 71, Labor) reaches every person, firm and private corporation — public service corporations included, nonprofit charitable, fraternal, cultural and religious ones excluded — with “five (5) or more workmen or operatives regularly in the same business.” Five or more. “Domestic servants, farmers and farm labor are not included” — though that exemption “does not apply to the processing of agricultural products when carried on commercially” — and neither are maritime and transportation employments governed by federal law.

An employer may also elect in writing, with the person’s agreement, to exempt a sole proprietor, a partner, or an employee owning “fifteen percent (15%) or more of its stock” — and that person is then “excluded from the total number of workers or operatives toward reaching the mandatory coverage threshold level of five (5).” The exemption can drop an employer under the threshold entirely.

Temporary total disability pays 66-2/3% of the employee’s average weekly wage under §71-3-17(b), for no more than 450 weeks. That 450 does two jobs: it caps duration, and under §71-3-13(2) the same multiple — 450 weeks times 66-2/3% of the state average weekly wage — sets the aggregate dollar cap. No weekly maximum is fixed in dollars anywhere, so learn the formula, never an amount.

Two clocks run under §71-3-35: 30 days for actual notice to the employer, and two years from the date of the injury or death to file with the commission.

Compliance under §71-3-75 comes three ways: insure with “a carrier authorized to insure such liability in this state,” self-insure on proof of financial ability, or pool liabilities with employers “engaged in a common type of business activity” as group self-insurers. All of it is administered by the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission, not the Insurance Department.