Mississippi, along with North Carolina, has preserved the tort of “alienation of affections,” which enables lawsuits by married persons against a spouse’s lover for undermining a marriage. Exercising long-arm jurisdiction, it even allows suits against alleged paramours who have never set foot in Mississippi but (it is claimed) engaged in trysts with a married Mississippian outside the state. In a recent case, however, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a woman sued under the law could move to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction on the grounds that she had no idea her boyfriend resided in Mississippi over the course of a relationship conducted in other states. [Nordness v. Faucheaux via Volokh]
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