OCEAN SPRINGS — A Mississippi battle continues in a legal dispute about dissolving a business partnership that managed a program to ticket uninsured motorists.
Chancery Judge Neil Harris booted a member of the media from the courtroom Thursday morning, saying he would hold a closed hearing in a legal dispute between two companies that previously ran a program to nab uninsured motorists.
After having a bailiff tape paper over the window so nobody could see him on the bench, Harris decided to unseal the court file in the case that three politically connected Mississippians filed against their partner, Georgia-based Securix LLC. Attorneys for both sides said when they emerged from the courtroom that Harris had decided to unseal the file. The file could be unsealed Thursday afternoon.
Exhibits and financial records, they said, will remain closed.
READ MORE: Private business ticketed uninsured Mississippi vehicle owners. Then the program blew up.
What was previously known about the lawsuit comes from its brief removal to federal court in Gulfport, where the file is open.
The three Mississippians, operating as QJR LLC, sued in September to dissolve their partnership with Securix LLC in the uninsured motorist program. QJR also is suing Securix and its chairman, Jonathan Miller of Georgia, for defamation.
“They (QJR) want to stop the defamation from ruining political careers, that’s their argument,” Securix attorney Albert R. Jordan IV said in the federal case, a hearing transcript shows.
READ MORE: Coast judge upholds secrecy in politically charged case. Media appeals ruling.
Very little else was known about the lawsuit, which QJR asked Harris to seal. Harris obliged. By Thursday, QJR had no objection to the file being unsealed, said company member Robert Wilkinson, a Pascagoula attorney.
MS media fights for court access
Media companies Mississippi Today and the Sun Herald on July 14 asked the state Supreme Court to compel Harris to open the court file. Court files are open by law. A compelling reason for closing a court file must be demonstrated in an open hearing, weighing the interests of the public against litigants’ right to privacy, Mississippi case law has established. Harris never held such a hearing before closing the file.
Securix uses automatic license plate readers, usually mounted on traffic signals, to capture images of license plates. With the help of artificial intelligence, Securix can extract license plate numbers from the images.
The company aimed to team up with Mississippi cities to share in revenue from the program. Ticketed vehicle owners were offered the option of showing proof of insurance, entering a diversion program for $300 or taking their cases to court, where they could face stiffer consequences.
In May 2021, the city of Ocean Springs was the first client Securix LLC signed on. Securix teamed up with QJR so the Mississippi partners could help secure more contracts, municipal records show. QJR members, who used their first names for the company initials, are Quinton Dickerson and Josh Gregory of Frontier Strategies in the metro Jackson area, plus attorney Robert Wilkinson.
Both Gregory and Wilkinson were in court Thursday with QJR’s attorney, Jaklyn Wrigley of Ocean Springs.
Frontier is an advertising agency that has managed state and local political campaigns, while Wilkinson has worked with numerous government entities, including the city of Ocean Springs.
Securix Mississippi was able to sign on the cities of Senatobia, Pearl and Biloxi for the uninsured motorist program. But the Mississippi Department of Public Safety shut down Securix access to a crucial insured motorist database in August, after Securix LLC chairman Miller raised concerns about whether proper law enforcement controls were in place, according to DPS.
Miller claimed QJR had stopped sharing program information and access with him in March 2024.
This article was produced in partnership between the Sun Herald and Mississippi Today.
