Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw

*73. Justice Marshall

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case we must decide whether a Mississippi statute imposing a 15% penalty on parties who appeal unsuccessfully from a money judgment violates the Equal Protection Clause.

I

This action grows out of allegations that appellant Bankers Life and Casualty Company refused in bad faith to pay appel-lee Lloyd Crenshaw’s insurance claim for loss of a limb. According to testimony at trial, appellee was injured on January 6, 1979, when a car alternator he was repairing rolled off his workbench and landed on his foot. Three days later, after the…