The discovery missteps were real, but the panel found one piece of the defense had real footing
A Mississippi appeals court has wiped out a $52,433.85 attorney-fee award against the state prison agency, ruling the trial court swung too hard.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals on May 12, 2026 reversed an order that had forced the Mississippi Department of Corrections to pay all of former probation/parole officer Greg Galloway's attorneys' fees in a wage dispute. The $7,231.63 he was awarded for unpaid wages and expense reimbursements stands. The fee award goes back to the trial court for another look.
Galloway worked the security detail at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman from January to March 2020, after riots broke out at the prison in late 2019 and early 2020. He later worked shifts transporting inmates to Memphis-area hospitals in November 2021. He resigned that December. When a pre-suit demand for his wages went unanswered, he sued MDOC in Hinds County Circuit Court for breach of contract and violations of his rights under the Mississippi Constitution.
The case then turned into a discovery fight. MDOC objected to every one of Galloway's requests on the grounds that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction, missed deadlines, filed a response to a motion to compel at 10 p.m. the night before the hearing, and then failed to appear at the hearing the next morning. The circuit court eventually entered a default judgment against MDOC on liability as a sanction for repeated discovery violations. It awarded Galloway his wages and expense reimbursements. Then it ordered MDOC to pay every dollar of his legal fees – $52,433.85 – under Rule 11 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure and the court's inherent authority to police the litigation in front of it.
The appeals court did not defend MDOC's conduct. The panel described the way MDOC handled the case as perplexing and agreed that some sanction may still be warranted on remand. The trial court, the panel noted, had already found that MDOC's late filings and no-show were disrespectful to the court.
But the panel drew a clear line. MDOC's main defense - that the circuit court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over a state employee's contract claim – was not frivolous. That exact question was already on its way to the Mississippi Supreme Court in a related case, MDOC v. McClure, when Galloway filed suit. The Supreme Court only resolved it on May 30, 2024, and even then framed its ruling as narrowly tailored to that case. Until then, MDOC's argument was at least colorable, a legal term meaning it had real footing. Under Mississippi law, a colorable defense cannot be punished with sanctions.
For HR leaders, employment counsel, and anyone who runs payroll for a public-sector or unionized workforce, the decision lands on three useful points.
The first is that wage authorization is a paper trail problem. The whole dispute traced back to whether MDOC's then-commissioner had authorized overtime for the Parchman detail, and whether the agency had authorized overtime for the November 2021 hospital transports. When that record is thin or contested, employers end up arguing about what was promised, not just what was worked. Clear written authorizations, kept on file, would have shut this down at the demand-letter stage.
The second is that discovery conduct is its own exposure. Galloway won on liability not because his wage case was airtight, but because MDOC failed to comply with a court order to produce documents. The default judgment did the work. The appeals court was explicit that conduct like this can support a sanction. The trial court just has to tie the sanction to the specific filing or action that crossed the line, and keep it proportionate to that conduct.
The third is that fee-shifting as a punishment has limits. Mississippi courts can award attorneys' fees under Rule 11, their inherent authority, or the state's Litigation Accountability Act. All three require a specific finding: that a filing was frivolous, filed to harass or delay, or an abuse of process. Blanket fee awards that sweep in an entire defense will not survive appeal if any part of that defense was reasonable.
On remand, the trial court can take another swing at the fees, this time narrower and tied to specific conduct. The $2,500 MDOC already paid under Rule 37 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure remains. The default judgment on liability remains. The rest is up for grabs.
