Seymour Law Firm

09/03/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES:
DOGS MAY GET AWAY WITH IT. GROWN HUMANS, NEVER.

Every once in a while, I encounter a news story that causes me to stop what I am doing, reread it, and wonder whether perhaps I have misunderstood the English language.

This week, Fox News reported that a 39-year-old California man—whom the media has rather unfortunately dubbed the “serial butt-sniffer”—was arrested again after police alleged he was crouching near female shoppers and smelling them in two different stores.

According to the report, this gentleman is a registered s*x offender with previous similar arrests dating back to 2021, including a 2023 incident at a Barnes & Noble that was caught on video. Police reportedly arrested him on suspicion of violating his parole, and Fox News reported that he was being held without bail.

Those are the reported allegations. He is, of course, entitled to all of the constitutional protections afforded to anyone accused of a crime.

Now that we have handled the professional lawyer portion of today’s program:

Sir.

No.

Dogs may occasionally get away with sniffing somebody’s backside.

GROWN HUMANS MAY NOT.

I really did not anticipate this being a legal distinction we needed to discuss in 2026, but apparently The Critter Chronicles continues to provide important public services.

When Honey meets another dog, she may engage in certain introductory customs that would be considered completely unacceptable at Capone’s on a Friday night.

This is because Honey is a dog.

Honey does not understand social boundaries.

Honey has never read a criminal statute.

Honey is not on parole.

Honey also has no constitutional right to counsel, although based upon some of the nonsense she has pulled at my house, she could probably use it.

Human beings, however, are expected to conduct themselves somewhat differently.

There is a fairly substantial amount of daylight between:

“Fido, quit sniffing that dog.”

and

“Sir, please step away from the woman in the Barnes & Noble.”

One is ordinary canine behavior.

The other may result in police involvement, criminal charges, parole consequences and an extraordinarily uncomfortable conversation with your lawyer.

And lawyers already have enough uncomfortable conversations.

I have practiced law long enough to know that human beings are capable of making some spectacularly questionable decisions.

People get angry.

People get drunk.

People get jealous.

People get carried away.

People occasionally have moments when their common sense apparently packs a suitcase, leaves the state and refuses to provide a forwarding address.

But adulthood comes with an unfortunate legal reality:

You generally do not get the same grace we give the family dog.

If Honey steals a sandwich off the kitchen counter, I can point at her and say:

“Did you do this?”

Honey will immediately lower her head, avoid eye contact and look so pitiful that within approximately seven minutes somebody in my house will give her another snack.

Try that strategy at an arraignment and see how it works out for you.

And if you are already on probation or parole, your margin for creative decision-making becomes considerably smaller.

Court orders, probation conditions and parole conditions are not suggestions.

They are not recommendations.

They are certainly not invitations to test exactly how much foolishness the criminal justice system is willing to tolerate before somebody comes looking for you.

This particular case is in California, so I am not attempting to analyze California criminal law from my little office on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I am simply offering a broader piece of legal advice that I believe travels quite well across state lines:

Keep your hands to yourself.

Respect other people’s personal space.

Follow your court orders.

Follow your probation or parole conditions.

And if you suddenly find yourself contemplating conduct that would normally cause someone to yell,

“BAD DOG! STOP THAT!”

perhaps reconsider.

Dogs occasionally get away with things because they are dogs.

Adult humans have frontal lobes, driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers and, occasionally, bond conditions.

Society expects more from us.

Apparently, some days, we need reminding.

THE LITTLE LAW FIRM ON THE BAYOU
Seymour Law Firm, PLLC

Representing human beings on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The dogs generally know when to quit.

09/02/2026

🔥🎉 HAPPY 32ND BIRTHDAY, MINDY!! 🎉🔥

Today we’re celebrating one of the people who keeps Seymour Law Firm running with plenty of personality, heart, and just the right amount of FIRE! ❤️‍🔥

Mindy is fiery, spunky, loving, caring, hardworking, and always 100% herself—and we wouldn’t have her any other way! She brings so much energy and heart to our office, and we are incredibly thankful to have her as part of the Seymour Law Firm family. ⚖️❤️

Here’s to 32 being full of happiness, laughter, success, unforgettable memories, and plenty of reasons to celebrate!

🥳 Mindy, we hope you ROCK 32 just like you rock everything else! 🥳

Help us wish our amazing Legal Assistant a very HAPPY 32ND BIRTHDAY! 🎂🎈🔥

We love you, Mindy! ❤️
— Your Seymour Law Firm Family

09/01/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/19SqVnnEsL/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Podcast Episode · The Mudcat Report: Mississippi Gulf Coast Community News & Guests · September 1 · 35m

09/01/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, NOW WITH VENOM

There are certain things I have come to expect at a high school football game.

Teenagers painted in school colors.

A marching band playing loudly in the stands.

Cheerleaders.

Concession-stand nachos capable of surviving a nuclear event.

Parents screaming coaching instructions from Row 14 as though the actual coaching staff has simply been waiting for their input.

What I generally do NOT expect is:

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s game. Please remain alert for rattlesnakes.”

Yet here we are.

Apparently, a high school football game in Riviera, Texas, recently came with an honest-to-God rattlesnake advisory because there had been an increased presence of rattlesnakes in the area.

Texas looked at heat, humidity, teenage boys slamming into each other at full speed, and the ordinary possibility of a fistfight in the parking lot and apparently said:

“You know what this needs?

Venom.”

I HAVE QUESTIONS

First and foremost:

What exactly is the protocol here?

Because if I am sitting in the bleachers eating a hot dog and somebody says:

“Snake!”

I am not stopping to determine whether the snake is venomous.

I am not identifying markings.

I am not Googling “Texas snake species.”

I am abandoning the hot dog, the football game, and possibly several people I previously claimed to love.

Sorry, Philip.

Every woman has her limits.

Mine apparently begins somewhere around “rattlesnake underneath the home-team bleachers.”

AND, OF COURSE, THE LAWYER IN ME HAS LIABILITY QUESTIONS

Because apparently I am incapable of seeing a rattlesnake advisory without immediately ruining everybody’s fun by thinking about premises liability.

Generally speaking, schools and other property owners have duties concerning reasonably foreseeable hazards on property under their control. Exactly what duty exists—and whether reasonable precautions were taken—depends heavily on the circumstances and applicable state law.

But when your pregame announcement includes the words “increased presence of rattlesnakes,” I feel like we have officially moved past a purely hypothetical danger.

At that point, somebody somewhere has apparently seen enough rattlesnakes to decide the public needs a warning.

And now my lawyer brain has taken over:

What did the school know?

When did it know it?

What precautions were reasonable?

Were the areas around the stadium inspected?

Was vegetation controlled?

Was there a response plan if somebody encountered or was bitten by a snake?

And perhaps most importantly:

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR REMOVING THE RATTLESNAKE?

Because I can tell you right now who is not.

Me.

Absolutely not.

I went to law school for many reasons, one of which, apparently now, was specifically to avoid professions requiring me to pick up venomous reptiles.

Lawyers historically attend law school to avoid higher math.

I personally would like to now add rattlesnake removal to that list.

THIS ALSO CREATES AN INTERESTING PARENTING DECISION

Your child has been practicing football since July.

He has worked hard.

Tonight is the big game.

Then the school sends out:

“Please use extra caution due to the increased presence of rattlesnakes.”

Now Mama has to decide whether supporting her child requires entering a reptile combat zone.

Some mothers will immediately grab the stadium blanket.

Some will grab boots and a flashlight.

Some will tell Daddy:

“You better video the whole thing.”

I am not judging any of these women.

Particularly the third one.

MISSISSIPPI, BEFORE WE LAUGH TOO HARD

We really don’t have room to talk.

We have alligators.

We have cottonmouths.

We have rattlesnakes.

We have copperheads.

We have wild hogs.

We have coyotes.

We have bears wandering around in places where people suddenly discover Mississippi has bears.

And on the Gulf Coast, we have enough assorted wildlife that occasionally I look into the backyard and think:

“Well. That’s new.”

So this could absolutely happen here.

Although I firmly believe Mississippi would handle it somewhat differently.

We would issue the warning.

Somebody’s uncle would immediately announce that he knows exactly how to catch a rattlesnake.

Three other men would disagree about the proper method.

Someone would produce equipment from the bed of a pickup truck.

Nobody would leave.

The concession stand would continue selling hamburgers.

And kickoff would occur precisely as scheduled.

Because SEC country has conditioned us to accept a frankly unreasonable amount of personal risk in connection with football.

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES OFFICIAL SAFETY RULE

If I encounter a dangerous critter at a football game, I have a very simple policy:

I am not touching it.

I am not antagonizing it.

I am not taking a selfie with it.

And I am absolutely not standing around while somebody’s cousin Earl demonstrates something he saw on YouTube.

I am backing away and notifying somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.

I recommend everyone else do the same.

This rule applies equally well to rattlesnakes, alligators, wild hogs, and certain football fans after a questionable fourth-quarter officiating call.

Some hazards simply cannot be reasoned with.

09/01/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES:
WHEN THE TIGER LAWYERS UP AND THE REST OF THE SEC STARTS DISCUSSING EVICTION

Seymour the Law Firm Alligator would like to begin today’s Critter Chronicle with a disclosure.

Actually, several disclosures.

Tina is a Mississippi State Bulldog fan (her husband graduated from MSU, her great uncle was a professor at MSU, her grandfather-in-law played football at MSU, the kids graduated from MSU, and the grandbabies are in the Bully’s Kids Club).

Mary Catherine is an LSU graduate.

LSU is involved.

The SEC is involved.

Judges are involved.

Lawyers are involved.

Former professional football players are involved.

And apparently somebody has now floated the collegiate equivalent of:

“Maybe we just kick LSU out?”

So Seymour Law Firm is uniquely qualified to provide fair, unbiased and completely neutral legal analysis of this developing situation.

We have reached this conclusion through a legal doctrine we just invented called “offsetting football bias.”

Mary Catherine will represent the Tigers.

Tina will represent truth, justice and the Southeastern Conference’s God-given right to ring a cowbell.

Hail State.

Let’s proceed.

FIRST: NO, LSU HAS NOT BEEN KICKED OUT OF THE SEC

Everybody settle down.

Nobody has changed the locks in Baton Rouge.

Mike the Tiger has not been served with an eviction notice.

Nobody has placed LSU’s belongings on the curb.

And Greg Sankey has not shown up at Tiger Stadium with a deputy and a Writ of Possession.

Yet.

What actually happened is considerably more interesting.

According to reporting by Ross Dellenger, leaders from SEC schools have been discussing some fairly nuclear options in response to LSU’s pursuit of former professional football players.

Those reportedly include litigation, probation, refusing to compete against LSU and, at the extreme end of the menu:

Expulsion from the SEC.

DISCUSSING.

Nobody has actually voted to send the Tiger packing.

This distinction is important because Facebook has approximately the same relationship with nuance that an angry raccoon has with a trash-can lid.

Clanga Clanga.

SO WHAT IN THE PURPLE-AND-GOLD HELL STARTED THIS?

The SEC adopted a rule addressing athletes who have already entered the professional ranks and later attempt to return to college athletics.

LSU apparently looked at that rule.

Then looked at some former professional football players who may still have college eligibility.

Then looked back at the rule.

And apparently said:

“That sounds like something a judge can sort out.”

Mary Catherine would probably characterize this as zealous advocacy.

Tina would characterize it as LSU doing LSU things.

The Court will disregard Tina’s last statement.

Go Dawgs.

AND THEN THE JUDGES ENTERED THE CHAT

Courts have issued temporary relief affecting the SEC’s ability to enforce its eligibility rule involving these players.

And THAT is where this stops being merely football drama and turns into one hell of a law-school examination question.

LSU’s basic position can be boiled down to:

If the court says you cannot enforce the rule against us, then you cannot enforce the rule against us.

Fair enough.

The SEC’s position is essentially:

We are a voluntary athletic association. Our members agreed to our rules. We have the authority to determine who is eligible to participate in our conference.

Also fair enough.

Then apparently some people around the SEC started considering Door Number Three:

Fine.

Maybe we just won’t play you.

And somewhere in Starkville, a cowbell rang without human assistance.

Clanga Clanga.

WAIT. CAN THEY DO THAT?

Now we have reached the fun lawyer part.

A court ordering the SEC not to enforce a particular eligibility rule is one question.

Whether that means another university can be legally compelled to take the field against LSU under those circumstances is potentially a very different question.

That raises issues involving contracts, voluntary associations, conference governance, the scope of injunctive relief and potentially antitrust law.

In other words, we have traveled a considerable distance from:

“Can this guy play football?”

We are now approaching:

“Can a judge make Alabama show up?”

At this point every SEC general counsel has probably closed their office door, turned off their phone and started billing.

Mary Catherine is undoubtedly enjoying this.

Tina is enjoying it for entirely different reasons.

Clanga Clanga.

And before anybody gets carried away, Seymour would like to clarify one additional point of law:

No matter what happens here — whether LSU wins, the SEC wins, the Tiger gets evicted, the conference implodes, or college football as we know it ceases to exist — none of this will somehow make anyone in the known universe like Lane Kiffin.

Some legal principles are simply too well settled to require further analysis.

Clanga Clanga.

AND THEN SOMEBODY APPARENTLY SAID THE E-WORD

Expulsion.

Now THAT would be something.

LSU is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and has been in the SEC since 1932.

Removing LSU would not be the equivalent of asking Cousin Earl to leave the family fish fry because he drank too much bourbon and insulted Aunt Linda.

This would be more like telling Cousin Earl that after 94 years, he is no longer actually related to us.

So before anybody starts posting:

“BREAKING NEWS: LSU EVICTED FROM SEC; TIGER SEEN HITCHHIKING WEST ON I-10” —

No.

We are nowhere near that point.

But the fact that conference leaders are reportedly discussing remedies this extreme tells you this dispute is considerably more serious than the average argument over player eligibility.

The Tiger remains firmly in the swamp.

The other critters are apparently just standing around the edge reading the HOA covenants and checking the section on nuisance animals.

SEYMOUR LAW FIRM NOW PRESENTS COMPLETELY IMPARTIAL LEGAL ANALYSIS

This is where our internal quality-control procedures become important.

Tina is a Mississippi State Bulldog fan.

Mary Catherine is an LSU graduate.

Therefore, under the aforementioned Doctrine of Offsetting Football Bias, the law firm is neutral.

Tina wishes LSU a fair hearing, appropriate due process and a thoughtful judicial determination based solely upon the applicable law.

Mary Catherine appreciates this unexpected display of professionalism.

Tina would also like the record to reflect:

Cowbells are better than yellow britches.

Mary Catherine: Objection.

Tina: Overruled.

Mary Catherine: You can’t overrule my objection just because you own the law firm.

Tina: Watch me.

CLANGA CLANGA.

Mary Catherine: Objection. Relevance.

Tina: Cowbells are always relevant.

Mary Catherine: That is not a rule of evidence.

Tina: It is in Oktibbeha County.

Mary Catherine: We practice on the Gulf Coast.

Tina: Hail State.

Seymour the Alligator has advised both attorneys that this exchange will not appear on the bill.

BUT THERE ACTUALLY IS A SERIOUS LEGAL LESSON HERE

Underneath all the football foolishness is a genuinely fascinating legal issue.

When you voluntarily join an organization — whether it is an athletic conference, professional association, nonprofit, HOA or some other private organization — you generally agree to operate under its governing documents and rules.

But organizational rules do not necessarily exist beyond judicial scrutiny.

If those rules collide with contractual rights, statutory law, antitrust principles or other legally protected interests, courts can become involved.

And once a court limits an organization’s ability to enforce one of its rules, another question can emerge:

How far does the court’s authority extend?

Can the organization discipline the member another way?

Can other members independently refuse to participate?

At what point does enforcement of membership rules become unlawful retaliation for exercising legal rights?

And, perhaps most importantly for the SEC:

Who gets custody of the Golden Boot if this divorce gets ugly?

That last one may not technically be before the Court.

Yet.

SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

We watch the courts.

We watch the SEC.

We watch LSU.

And we remember that an internet headline saying:

“SEC EXPLORING EXPULSION OF LSU”

does not mean:

“LSU HAS BEEN KICKED OUT OF THE SEC.”

Not even close.

For now, the Tiger is still sitting at the SEC dinner table.

Some of the relatives are apparently just whispering in the kitchen about whether to stop setting him a place.

Seymour will be standing by with the appropriate paperwork if this turns into an eviction.

Mary Catherine will be standing by to defend her beloved Tigers.

And Tina will be standing approximately six feet behind Mary Catherine, behaving with all the professionalism and decorum expected of a Mississippi attorney.

Holding a cowbell.

Clanga Clanga.

Go Dawgs.

Hail State.

Seymour Law Firm, PLLC
The Little Law Firm on the Bayou

Educational and entertainment purposes only. The Critter Chronicles are not legal advice. They are what happens when lawyers read the news and are left unsupervised.

And to our LSU friends — including the one drawing a paycheck here:

We love y’all.

We respect y’all.

We sincerely hope the courts provide a fair and legally sound resolution to this dispute.

Even if y’all insist on wearing those yellow britches.

Clanga Clanga.

08/31/2026

🇺🇸 LABOR DAY OFFICE CLOSURE 🇺🇸

Even the gator gets a day off. 🐊😎

Seymour Law Firm will be CLOSED Monday, September 7, 2026, in observance of Labor Day.

We’ll be back at it Tuesday, September 8th for our normal business hours:

⚖️ 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
🥪 Closed for lunch 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

We hope everyone has a safe and relaxing Labor Day — whether you’re spending it on the water, at the grill, with family and friends, or doing absolutely NOTHING because you’ve earned it. 🇺🇸

From all of us at Seymour Law Firm, PLLC — The Little Law Firm on the Bayou, have a wonderful Labor Day! ❤️🤍💙

📞 228-697-3476
🌐 seymourlawms.com

🐊⚖️

08/31/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES:
YOUR LITTLE ANGEL MAY COME WITH A BILL

Seymour the Law Firm Alligator would like to discuss something every Mississippi parent should probably know:

Sometimes when Junior acts a fool, Junior is not the only one who may have a problem.

Imagine this:

Little Boudreaux Gator is 16.

Little Boudreaux gets mad at his neighbor.

Little Boudreaux decides the appropriate conflict-resolution technique is to take a baseball bat to the neighbor’s mailbox, flowerpots and lawn decorations.

Mama Gator wakes up the next morning, looks outside and says:

“Why is there a deputy standing in my driveway?”

Well, Mama. We need to talk.

MISSISSIPPI ACTUALLY HAS A PARENTAL LIABILITY LAW

Under Mississippi Code § 93-13-2, a property owner may recover up to $5,000, plus necessary court costs, from the parents of a minor who is over 10 and under 18 when that child maliciously and willfully damages or destroys someone else’s property.

And that statute does not necessarily mean $5,000 is the end of the story. The law specifically says the statutory remedy is in addition to other actions that may otherwise exist.

Translation:

“Boudreaux did it, not me” may be factually correct.

It may not, however, be financially comforting.

BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE.

Mississippi does not generally make parents automatically responsible for every tort committed by their children simply because they are the parents.

But parents can potentially face liability based on their own negligent supervision.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has explained that parents have a duty to exercise reasonable care in supervising their minor children to prevent reasonably foreseeable intentional injuries to others. A negligent-supervision claim requires proof of duty, breach, causation and damages.

The big issue is usually foreseeability.

If your child has previously engaged in similar dangerous or malicious behavior, and you knew or reasonably should have known about it, simply ignoring the problem can become much more significant. The Mississippi Supreme Court has said that merely failing to control a child is not enough; there generally must be notice of prior conduct sufficiently similar to put the parent on notice of the child’s propensity to cause harm.

In other words:

If Boudreaux has never done anything remotely like this before, that is one situation.

If Boudreaux has already destroyed three mailboxes, chased the neighbor with a shovel, threatened everybody on Snapchat, and Mama’s parenting strategy has been:

“Well, you know how teenagers are…”

We may need a longer appointment.

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES MORAL OF THE STORY

Children make mistakes.

Teenagers occasionally make spectacularly stupid mistakes.

But when parents know their child has developed dangerous tendencies and fail to take reasonable steps to address them, the consequences may not remain exclusively Junior’s problem.

And when Junior intentionally destroys somebody else’s property, Mississippi law provides a specific avenue for holding parents financially responsible in certain circumstances.

So teach your little gators well.

Because one day that precious baby who “would never do something like that” may be standing beside a freshly demolished mailbox holding the exact baseball bat used to demolish it.

And Seymour has learned that deputies are remarkably unimpressed by the sentence:

“He’s really a good kid.”

General legal information only. Every situation is different, and this post is not legal advice.

08/30/2026

Katrina: We Rebuilt. We Healed. But We Didn’t Forget.

Twenty-one years ago, Hurricane Katrina changed the Mississippi Gulf Coast forever.

And she changed me.

I found two email messages recently.

One was an update sent to me after the storm, when communication with the Coast was nearly impossible.

It told me who had a house, who didn’t, who had water in their home, and simply: we survived.

The other was something I wrote shortly afterward.

At the time, I was living in Texas.

After two days without hearing from my family in Biloxi, my now ex-husband and I loaded a U-Haul with food, water, medicine and supplies and headed toward Mississippi.

Our neighbors in Texas heard what we were doing and started bringing things to our garage.

Bags of produce.

Dried beans.

Water.

Flashlights.

Medicine.

By the time we left, that U-Haul was packed as tightly as we could get it.

When we finally reached the Coast, several homes in my family were gone.

But my family was alive.

And everywhere I looked, people were helping people.

There was grief beyond anything I had experienced.

There was destruction that was difficult to comprehend.

But there was also this extraordinary determination that seemed to rise out of the mud and debris right alongside us.

That experience changed the direction of my professional life.

After Katrina, I went into risk management in hospitals.

I had watched hospitals, businesses, governments and entire communities essentially have to recreate themselves from the ground up.

I became fascinated with the questions we often don’t ask until something terrible has already happened:

What happens if this fails?

What happens if this person dies?

Who has authority to make decisions?

Where are the records?

What happens to the property?

What happens to the business?

What happens to the family?

And most importantly: what could we have done before the crisis to make what comes afterward a little easier?

Those questions followed me from hospital risk management back into the practice of law.

It’s one of the reasons probate means so much to me today.

It’s one of the reasons risk management is still woven into the way I practice law.

And it’s absolutely one of the reasons I believe so strongly in estate planning.

A good estate plan isn’t really about documents sitting in a folder somewhere.

It’s about preparing for the day when life suddenly doesn’t look anything like it did the day before.

Katrina taught me that the unthinkable actually happens.

In 2012, seven years after Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I moved home.

And even then, Katrina came with me.

When I looked at property to purchase what would eventually become our Little Law Firm on the Bayou, I asked a question that people who aren’t from here might find strange:

Where did the waterline reach during Katrina?

When Philip and I looked at our home in Gulf Hills, I asked it again.

Where was the Katrina waterline?

Twenty-one years later, that storm is still part of the way many of us on the Mississippi Gulf Coast think.

I love living here.

I love our people.

I love the water.

I love the communities that stretch across this Coast.

I love the stubbornness and humor and generosity that make this place home.

But if you lived through Katrina—or loved people who did—there is still a shadow.

Every hurricane season, it reaches forward from the past and puts just a little fear and uncertainty into the future.

We know what can happen.

We have seen it.

But there is something else Katrina taught me about Mississippi, and particularly about the Mississippi Gulf Coast:

We don’t let fear dictate our lives or our choices.

We didn’t abandon our Coast because a storm destroyed it.

We stood up.

We dug out.

We helped our neighbors.

We mourned the people we lost.

We rebuilt our homes, hospitals, businesses, churches and communities.

We healed.

And we kept living.

Maybe that is what preparedness really means.

It isn’t believing you can prevent every terrible thing from happening.

You can’t.

It’s doing what you can today so that if the terrible thing comes tomorrow, the people you love have a path forward.

That lesson has followed me from Katrina, to hospital risk management, to probate court, to estate planning, and all the way back home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Twenty-one years later, I still believe what I wrote after Katrina:

In times of trouble, you don’t see us running away.

You see us standing shoulder to shoulder, bearing the burden together.

We rebuilt.

We healed.

But we didn’t forget.

08/29/2026

THE CRITTER CHRONICLES: APPARENTLY WE NEED TO DISCUSS TODDLER TORTFEASORS

Every now and then, I read a court opinion from another state and think:

Well.

That’s certainly one way to do it.

This week’s installment comes courtesy of a New York case that periodically makes its way back around the internet.

The case involved two four-year-olds allegedly racing their bicycles — training wheels and all — down a Manhattan sidewalk when they struck an 87-year-old woman.

A lawsuit followed.

And a New York judge refused to dismiss the negligence claim against one of the children simply because she was four years old.

Four.

Years.

Old.

At four, most children are still eating chicken nuggets in shapes, wearing their shoes on the wrong feet, and occasionally becoming inconsolable because someone broke their banana in half.

New York:

“Let’s explore whether she breached the applicable standard of care.”

Naturally, this sent me down the rabbit hole to see what Mississippi has to say about our tiny potential tortfeasors.

Mississippi has historically taken a rather different approach.

If the child is under seven:

The Mississippi Supreme Court has repeatedly said a child under seven is incapable of negligence.

Not “probably.”

Not “depending on how mature little Brayden seemed that afternoon.”

Incapable.

In Williams v. Lumpkin, the Mississippi Supreme Court stated that it had “repeatedly held that a child under seven years of age is incapable of negligence.”

So your four-year-old may be capable of:

Drawing on your freshly painted wall.

Flushing something extremely expensive down the toilet.

Cutting her own bangs seventeen minutes before family pictures.

Feeding your $14 lunch to the dog.

Explaining, with extraordinary confidence, that she did NOT do the thing you literally watched her do.

But under Mississippi negligence law?

We are not putting her on the witness stand and asking:

“Ma’am, when you accelerated the Paw Patrol bicycle toward the intersection, did you appreciate the foreseeable risk your conduct created?”

Then we get to ages seven through fourteen.

Now Mississippi says there is a presumption that the child lacks sufficient discretion to be contributorily negligent — but that presumption can be overcome with proof of exceptional capacity, judgment and experience.

In other words, the older the Critter gets, the more complicated things become.

And there is another important exception: Mississippi has held that minors operating motor-propelled vehicles on public streets and highways can be held to the same rules of the road and standard of care as adults.

Apparently Mississippi draws a jurisprudential line somewhere between:

Barbie Jeep.

and

Actual Jeep.

Which, frankly, seems reasonable.

So no — despite the headline floating around about a four-year-old potentially facing a negligence claim in New York, I would not expect the same result under longstanding Mississippi law.

Here, if your four-year-old causes absolute chaos, destroys property, terrorizes the neighborhood and leaves a path of Goldfish crackers and broken dreams behind her, we may have several things to discuss.

Negligence by the four-year-old herself is probably not one of them.

The parents?

Well.

That is another Critter Chronicle entirely.

— Seymour Law Firm, PLLC

General information only. Every case depends on its particular facts and applicable law.