Rule II - Assignment of Cases to Judges(A.1) After the approval of these Rules by the Supreme Court, all cases except Youth Court, Mental Commitments and Drug and Alcohol Commitments will continue to be assigned to a Judge immediately upon the filing of the complaint by the use of a web based Computer program which shall be programmed to randomly select judges by a software algorithm which shall duplicate a mathematical random selection. The Clerk shall obtain the random judge selection by accessing web address www.courttools.com or some other web address which may be designated by this Court by Order of the Judges of this District and forwarded to the Clerks of the Sixth Chancery District. Access to the random judge selection function of the web address shall be by unique User ID and Password for each clerk. After obtaining a judge assignment, the Clerk shall print the judge assignment from the web page and docket and file assignment as the first document in the court file. Once a case is so assigned to a judge, only the judge to whom it is assigned will consider the matter, EXCEPT: (1) where the judge must recuse himself for good cause, (2) where the judge to whom it is assigned will be unavailable for at least five days to consider the matter for reasons such as sickness, duties outside the district, seminars and vacations, then the other judge may consider emergency matters, ex parte matters and uncontested or agreed matters. When a judge has signed an order under the above exception, it shall remain the case of the judge to whom it was originally assigned.Any order entered by the judge to whom a case is not assigned under the provision of said item (2) above, shall contain an explanation of the basis for the non-assigned judge signing the order.
(A.2) If either Judge Kilgore or Judge Kirk is assigned a case wherein recusal is necessacy, the case shall be automatically assigned to the other Judge. To compensate for the reassignment, the next case assigned to the Judge that got the reassigned case, shall be automatically assigned to the other Judge. Both Judges shall be notified immediately by the Clerk when this procedure is utilized. (A.3) In situations involving matters arising from the same set of facts or involving the same family that are filed and result in multiple causes, all such cases shall be assigned to the Judge to whom the first case filed was assigned. (B) Because of the urgency of mental, alcohol and drug commitments they shall be assigned by the clerk to the most readily available judge. However, the first attempt shall be made to assign all of such cases in Attala, Kemper, and Neshoba Counties to Judge Kilgore and all of such cases in Carroll, Choctaw, and Winston to Judge Kirk. (C) Youth Court cases and cases filed under § 41-41-53 Miss. Code of 1972, Annotated, from Attala, Kemper, and Neshoba Counties shall be assigned to Judge Kilgore. Youth Court cases and cases filed under § 41-41-53 Miss. Code of 1972, Annotated, from Carroll, Choctaw and Winston Counties shall be assigned to Judge Kirk. This system shall be used because many of these are urgent matters and there is need for coordination between the Court, the County Attorney, the Department of Human Services and Law Enforcement. In cases involving shelter hearings and detention hearings which are urgent, the other judge may hear the case when the designated Youth Court Judge is not available. (D) All cases heretofore assigned to Judge Love or Judge Fenwick are hereby assigned to Judge Kirk, except that all cases assigned to Judge Love or Judge Fenwick in which Kiley C. Kirk served as counsel shall automatically be assigned to Judge Kilgore. All cases heretofore assigned to Judge Prisock or Judge Kilpatrick are hereby assigned to Judge Kilgore except that all cases assigned to Judge Prisock or Judge Kilpatrick in which Joseph Kilgore served as counsel shall automatically be assigned to Judge Kirk.Miss. L. Chanc. Ct. R. II
Adopted 12/16/2010; amended 11/11/2019.