State Industries, Inc. v. Hodges

WALLER, Presiding Justice,

for the Court.

¶ 1. On September 6, 1992, eight-year-old Michelle Denise Hodges was burned when a gas-fired hot water heater located in her grandparents’ home exploded. Hodges died from her injuries thirteen days later. Hodges’s mother and sister filed a wrongful death suit in the Circuit Court of Holmes County in 1999 naming Mississippi Valley Gas Company as the primary defendant. State Industries, Inc. was joined as a defendant in the suit by the plaintiffs in an amended complaint on June 11, 2002. The amended complaint alleged that a gas-fired water heater…