Charles Cowan and Katelyn Foster recently received summary judgment for their client, Madison County, in a case filed against it in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. The case presented an issue of first impression regarding the separate nature of counties and the citizen service agencies they establish for providing certain public services to county residents. Cowan and Foster argued that Madison County was not a proper defendant because it was legally distinct from the Madison County Citizen Services Agency that it had established. The District Court granted the plaintiff limited discovery on the establishment of the Madison County Citizen Services Agency and its relationship with Madison County. After a round of summary judgment briefing on the issue, the Honorable Henry T. Wingate held in his sixteen-page opinion that under Mississippi’s statutory scheme, counties and citizen services agencies exist as separate political subdivisions and the plaintiff had not presented sufficient evidence to show the relationship between the two entities had departed from that scheme.