The Cop Car That Hit Her, And The Suspect Who Paid Nothing

The TV lawyer on the billboard wants you to believe a car wreck case wins itself. He has never tried a Mississippi police chase accident to a verdict and he never will, because the second one gets hard he hands your file to a secretary and tells you to take whatever the insurance company offers. A real one studies how fault gets split when a police cruiser, not the suspect, is the car that hits you. That is the trap the Luckett family ran into, and it is worth understanding before it happens to you.

Here is what happened. A Leake County deputy was chasing a suspect who was driving over one hundred miles an hour, weaving through traffic, running other cars off the road. The deputy blew through a red light at eighty seven miles an hour in a thirty five zone and slammed into Mary Luckett’s car as she pulled into the intersection on a green light. The suspect never touched her. He was a mile up the road. Yet when the dust settled, the court put fifty five percent of the fault on that fleeing suspect and only forty five percent on the county whose deputy actually hit her.

How A Mississippi Police Chase Accident Splits The Blame

Mississippi law lets a jury or judge assign a share of fault to every person who helped cause a wreck, even someone who is immune from paying and even someone whose car never made contact. The rule is Mississippi Code section 85-5-7. The Luckett court leaned on it to say that but for the suspect’s reckless flight, the deputy never would have been in that intersection at all. So the suspect, who pled guilty to felony fleeing, carried the majority of the fault on paper. The family walked away able to collect only against the county’s slice.

This is the part the billboard lawyer never explains. In a Mississippi police chase accident, the at fault driver in the patrol car can have his employer’s share cut down by pointing the finger at the criminal who started the chase. The fleeing suspect is usually broke, in jail, or both, so that slice of fault is money you will likely never see. If your lawyer does not fight the apportionment hard and early, you lose real dollars to a defendant who will never write a check.

What This Means If A Patrol Car Hits You

The county also gets a head start the moment the crash involves law enforcement. Under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act, a government entity is immune unless the officer acted in reckless disregard for the safety of people not involved in the crime. The Luckett deputy cleared that bar because she ran a red light at eighty seven in a thirty five and admitted she never thought about slowing down. But proving reckless disregard takes accident reconstruction, the pursuit policy, the speed data, and an expert who can walk a judge through all ten factors the Supreme Court uses. A secretary cannot build that. A TV lawyer will not pay for it.

A Mississippi police chase accident is one of the hardest injury cases there is. The defense will work the apportionment angle to shrink what the government owes, the immunity shield is real, and the deadlines under the Tort Claims Act are short and unforgiving. You need someone who knows the playbook before the clock runs out.

Before You Sign With Anybody, Read My Free Book

I wrote a free book that pulls back the curtain on how these cases really work and the mistakes that quietly destroy them. Before you let a TV lawyer’s secretary handle the biggest claim of your life, get the book and learn what they hope you never find out.

If a police chase wreck hurt you or killed someone you love, do not guess at the apportionment fight on your own. Learn how a serious Mississippi car wreck lawyer builds these cases and protects every dollar of your recovery.

P.S. The Luckett decision is public record at the Mississippi Court of Appeals, No. 2024-CA-00269-COA. The fleeing suspect carried more fault on paper than the cruiser that actually hit her. That is exactly why you fight apportionment from day one.