Mississippi Court Case Search — Find Your Lawsuit

Dena Standley | October 19, 2022

Legal Expert, Paralegal
Dena Standley, BA

Dena Standley is a seasoned paralegal with more than 20 years of experience in legal research and writing, having received a certification as a Legal Assistant/Paralegal from Southern Technical College.

Edited by Hannah Locklear

Editor at SoloSuit
Hannah Locklear, BA

Hannah Locklear is SoloSuit’s Marketing and Impact Manager. With an educational background in Linguistics, Spanish, and International Development from Brigham Young University, Hannah has also worked as a legal support specialist for several years.

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Summary: Mississippi Electronic Courts gives you access to court records online, for a price. In this article we discuss how to check the status of your court case in Mississippi. If you've been sued for a debt, you can use SoloSuit to respond.

When a creditor or debt collection agency files a lawsuit against you in Mississippi, the suit is entered into the court system, and the case record becomes public. The Mississippi state laws require all court records to be made available online and in local court offices for anyone to access, including case dockets (records of court proceedings).

It's important to know how to check the status of your court case so you can keep updated with new case filings, court hearings, and legal actions taken in the case. All debt collection proceedings in a Mississippi court of law are public records unless the case is extremely sensitive, such as those involving senior public officers.

Mississippi's judiciary branch has an online tool called Mississippi Electronic Courts (MEC) where you can access your court records online. However, this service comes at a cost.

Accessing court records can be challenging if you do not know what you are looking for. You need to learn how to find specific records on a state and local level. Let us discuss how you can maneuver the court records and find your lawsuit.

But first, let's take a look at how Mississippi's civil courts are structured.

Understand the Mississippi court structure

In order to find your case information online or in person, it's important to understand how the civil courts are structured in Mississippi. When you know what courts have jurisdiction over certain types of cases, it will be easier for you to narrow down the court to which your case is assigned. Debt collection cases are considered civil cases, so we will focus on Mississippi's civil court structure in this section.

In Mississippi, there are five levels of courts that deal with civil cases:

Supreme Court
Court of Appeals
Circuit Court
County Court
Justice Court

The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are appellate courts, which means they primarily handle civil cases that have been appealed from a lower level court. In other words, when someone disagrees with the outcome of a civil case, they can appeal the case, and have it reconsidered at a higher judicial level. The Supreme Court sends certain cases to the Court of Appeals for review, but usually cases appealed from the Circuit Court go straight to the Supreme Court.

There are 22 Circuit Courts throughout the state of Mississippi. Like the other appellate courts, the Circuit Court hears appeals from the County and Justice Courts.

The County Court handles civil cases involving up to $200,000, while the Justice Court deals with small claims cases involving $3,500 or less.

The graphic below further illustrates Mississippi's civil court structure:

hawaii court structure

Use MEC to search your court case online

Mississippi Electronic Courts, also known as MEC, is a great tool to use to look up civil and criminal court cases online at a low cost. With MEC, you can find your debt collection lawsuit when you enter some or all of the following search criteria:

Case number
Date filed
Party name
Case type
Court location

There is a $10 registration fee to sign up for MEC. After that, you will be charged $0.20 per page for the number of pages that result from any search, regardless of the number

of pages viewed, printed, or downloaded. If a search does not yield any results, you are charged the price for just one page of data.

Visit the courthouse to check your case status in person

If you don't have access to a computer, or you don't feel like paying the fees for MEC, you can always take a trip to the courthouse to check your case status. You can also call the court clerk if you don't feel like making the trip.

Most court clerks are willing to help you find your case. You can even request that they print copies of court records, but there will likely be a fee to do so.

Use this Mississippi court directory to find the address of your courthouse and the court clerk's phone number. On the left hand menu, click the drop down menu next to Circuit Court, then click on the Clerks option.

Are all Mississippi debt collection court records accessible?

Yes, all debt collection case records are accessible if you have the details to perform a case look-up in the Regular Courts or Supreme Court's online platform. This provision was made possible by the Mississippi Public Records Act (MPRA), which grants the public access to court records.

The Mississippi judiciary earnestly practices an open court system following the Mississippi constitution, outlined in their Statement of Policy Regarding Openness and Availability of Public Records. You can look up your case in the regular courts by following this link and entering your case details, such as case number, case status, file date, last entry date, and nature of the suit—in your case, debt collection.

How do case numbers work in Mississippi?

The case (or docket number) is assigned to each case filed in Mississippi courts. The docket number uses two digits to represent the year the case was filed, the type of case and what court it was filed in–which is usually represented by a letter or a number. Then, there will be a sequential series of numbers randomly generated.

Access Mississippi Supreme Court cases online

The State of Mississippi Judiciary website contains all Supreme Court cases made available to the public. To access them, enter the county, specific court, and the case number. If you do not have the case number, enter your full name. Accept the terms and conditions of accessing the records, and the documents will open.

The platform also has court records like journals and law reviews accessible in the Mississippi State Law Library. You can also confirm an attorney's qualification by entering their details in the Lawyer Directory - The Mississippi Bar.

Additionally, you can physically visit the court where your case was filed and tried. You must fill out a request form to access the specific court papers you want. Be prepared to pay a small fee for inspecting and copying the documents.

Lastly, the Mississippi judiciary court allows you to send a written request for court records, send the letter to:

First floor, Carroll Gartin Justice Building
450 High Street
P.O. Box 249
Jackson, MS 39201
(601) 359-3694

Respond to aForce a lawsuit out of court with SoloSuit

If you've been sued for a debt you owe, SoloSuit can help you respond in minutes. The first step to winning your debt collection lawsuit in Mississippi is to respond to the case with a written Answer. In Mississippi, you have 30 days to respond before you lose by default. When you lose by default, the debt collector can garnish your wages or put liens on your property.

To learn more about how to Answer a debt lawsuit, check out this video:

What is SoloSuit?

SoloSuit makes it easy to fight debt collectors.

You can use SoloSuit to respond to a debt lawsuit, to send letters to collectors, and even to settle a debt.

SoloSuit's Answer service is a step-by-step web-app that asks you all the necessary questions to complete your Answer. Upon completion, we'll have an attorney review your document and we'll file it for you.

Respond with SoloSuit

"First time getting sued by a debt collector and I was searching all over YouTube and ran across SoloSuit, so I decided to buy their services with their attorney reviewed documentation which cost extra but it was well worth it! SoloSuit sent the documentation to the parties and to the court which saved me time from having to go to court and in a few weeks the case got dismissed!" – James

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>>Read the FastCompany article: Debt Lawsuits Are Complicated: This Website Makes Them Simpler To Navigate