HermanGerel - Kitchens and Ellis

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Kitchens & Ellis

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The law firm of Kitchens & Ellis was founded in Jackson, Mississippi, on April 1, 1991, by James W. Kitchens and Margaret P. Ellis. Before joining forces, Mrs. Ellis and Mr. Kitchens had separately practiced law throughout Mississippi and other states, primarily representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases and a variety of tort claims, including insurance litigation, environmental matters, and other mass torts.

An active member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Mrs. Ellis has also held every elected office within the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association, and served as its first female president during 1994 and 1995. From the time of her admission to the Bar in 1983 until her then-law partner, C. R. McRae, was elected as a state supreme court justice in January of 1991, Mrs. Ellis pursued her career as a trial lawyer with the firm that had eventually become McRae & Ellis. Three months after Justice McRae assumed his duties with the Mississippi Supreme Court, Mrs. Ellis and Mr. Kitchens combined their firms. In March of 1999, Mrs. Ellis' eldest son, Jeffrey L. Ellis, began practicing law with Kitchens & Ellis after a year's clerkship with Justice William L. Waller, Jr., of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

James W. Kitchens received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, and in 1967 earned his Juris Doctor degree at the University of Mississippi at Oxford.

Mr. Kitchens has served on the Board of Governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America for more than twelve years, and has been co-chair of ATLA's national Key Person Committee during that same period. The ATLA Board of Governors unanimously elected him to serve on the association's executive committee for 1997-98, and he has spoken at numerous ATLA legal education programs on both civil and criminal law subjects. In August of 1999, he served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs in a jury trial that resulted in one of the largest verdicts in the United States in cases involving so-called "vanishing" life insurance premiums.

In 1998, Mr. Kitchens successfully litigated an heirship paternity proceeding on behalf of the only child of blues legend Robert Johnson, more than sixty years after the musician's death. That judgment has since been upheld in appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court, assuring that Kitchens & Ellis' client and his family will receive royalty income from music copyrights that will not expire until 2048.

Kitchens & Ellis, in recent years, has become a leading firm in class action litigation on behalf of consumers. Such lawsuits have included forced-placed insurance cases against numerous banks and insurance companies, and a significant case against a nationally-known health insurer on behalf of more than nine thousand of its former agents.

Mrs. Ellis and Mr. Kitchens were among the founding partners of HermanGerel and are now Of Counsel to the firm.