On January 9, 2009. Lyshell Wilson filed suit against Jocelyn Howard in a Mississippi court. Wilson’s complaint stated as follows: 

On December 22, 2007, Plaintiff Lyshell Wilson entered Citi Trends located [in] Jackson, Mississippi, for the purpose of shopping for clothing. While shopping on the premises of Citi Trends, Lyshell Wilson was brutally injured when an employee of Citi Trends, Jocelyn Howard, maliciously, recklessly, negligently, and violently attacked Lyshell Wilson with a pair of scissors. 

Howard filed a motion to dismiss, contending that Wilson had failed to file her complaint within the oneyear statute of limitations set forth by a Mississippi statute, which provides that “all actions for assault, assault and battery shall be commenced within one (1) year next after the cause of such action accrued, and not after.” (Different statutes of limitation apply to different types of claims. When a lawsuit raising a given claim has not been filed with an appropriate court prior to the expiration of the period specified in the relevant statute of limitations, the claim can no longer be pursued and is subject to dismissal.) Wilson responded to Howard’s motion by denying that she was filing a battery claim. Instead, Wilson insisted that the claim set forth in her complaint was a negligence claim. The Mississippi statute of limitations pertaining to negligence claims set forth a longer limitations period than the period specified by the statute applicable to assault and battery claims, and would not have expired by the time Wilson initiated her lawsuit. The trial court denied Howard’s motion to dismiss. On appeal, Howard made two arguments. First, she argued that the claim made in Wilson’s complaint was for battery-meaning that the complaint was not filed within the applicable one-year statute of limitations. Second, Howard argued that Wilson’s attempt to characterize the incident as an act of negligence was simply an attempt to circumvent the relevant statute of limitations. Was Howard correct? How did the appellate court rule?