October 11, 2026

Two legislative sessions, in 2024 and 2025, rewrote the rules that decide what a Louisiana injury claim is worth. The six changes on this page landed across three years, and each one switches on at a different moment. One keys to the date you were hurt. One keys to when your cause of action arose. One keys to the date your suit is filed.

That means two claims from the same crash can land on different sides of the same rule.

Which rule applies to your dates

The date you were injured sets your filing deadline. Two years if the injury arose after July 1, 2024. One year on or before that date.
The date your cause of action arose decides whether the 51 percent fault bar applies. That rule took effect January 1, 2026.
The date a suit is filed decides how your past medical bills are valued. Act 466 of 2025 applies to suits filed on or after January 1, 2026.

Each change has its citation. Where the commonly published date rule is a reading of the law rather than something the act says, this page says so.

The filing deadline doubled, and then split in two

For injuries arising after July 1, 2024, you have two years to file. Before that, you had one.

Louisiana calls this deadline prescription. That is the state's term for what most people know as a statute of limitations. Act 423 of 2024 moved it from one year to two and wrote the new rule into Civil Code article 3493.1.

The wording matters. Act 423 section 3 applies the new period to injury claims "arising after" the effective date. Not on or after. An injury on July 1, 2024 itself falls on the old side of that line.

The old one-year period still governs every injury that happened on or before July 1, 2024. If you were hurt in June 2024 and a friend was hurt in August 2024, you had one year and they had two.

Medical malpractice is carved out. Those claims still run under R.S. 9:5628 and its own timeline.

Wrongful death changed separately and later. Act 176 of 2025, effective August 1, 2025, gives families one year from the date of death or two years from the date of injury, whichever is longer. When someone is hurt badly and dies eighteen months later, the old rule could close the door before the family reached it. The new one does not. Medical malpractice wrongful death stays at one year from death.

Act 176 is one of the silent ones. It is a single section with no applicability clause and no effective-date section, so August 1, 2025 is the default set by article III, section 19 of the Louisiana Constitution, and which deaths the new period reaches is an inference rather than a rule you can read off the page.

You can now lose everything at 51 percent fault

Act 15 of 2025 rewrote Civil Code article 2323, effective January 1, 2026.

Read the thresholds carefully, because the article does not use round numbers. It bars recovery when your fault is "equal to or greater than fifty-one percent" and reduces recovery when it is "less than fifty-one percent". So 50 percent reduces your award. So does 50.5 percent. At 51 percent you recover nothing.

Plenty of pages describe this as a 50 percent rule. The gap between those two readings is an entire claim for somebody.

Louisiana used to be a pure comparative fault state. A person 90 percent at fault could still recover 10 percent of their damages. That is why insurance companies now argue fault harder than they argue injuries. Pushing you from 49 to 51 is worth the entire claim to them.

The judge or jury is now instructed on what the percentage actually does. Before, fault was allocated without anyone being told the consequence.

Act 15 has two sections, and the second one is nothing but "This Act shall become effective on January 1, 2026." It contains no applicability clause. It does not say whether it reaches a cause of action that arose in 2025 and goes to trial in 2027.

That causes of action arising before 2026 keep pure comparative fault is the consensus reading of Civil Code article 6, which makes substantive law prospective unless the legislature says otherwise. It is a sound reading and it is the one we work from. It is not a quotation, and we have not found a Louisiana appellate decision resolving it. If your accident sits near the end of 2025, that open question is worth a conversation rather than a web page.

The 51 percent bar is a general tort rule, not a car accident rule. It applies to slip and falls, premises cases, product cases and everything else governed by article 2323. If you have a premises claim and you have read that the bar is something that happens in auto cases, it touches you too.

Two things it does not reach. Offshore work is its own question, because a Jones Act or vessel claim is governed by federal maritime law rather than by article 2323. And one exception survives inside the article: Act 15 amended only Paragraph A and added Paragraph D, so Paragraph C still says that where part of the fault belongs to an intentional tortfeasor, the claim "shall not be reduced", notwithstanding Paragraph A. Nobody has litigated how that interacts with the new bar, so if an intentional act is part of your case, raise it.

What your medical bills are worth, and what actually changed for 2026

The rule limiting your recovery to what was paid rather than what was billed is not new. It has been in R.S. 9:2800.27 since January 1, 2021. The amendment history printed on the statute says so, and the legislature's own summary of the 2025 act says of that provision, in these words, "New law retains existing law."

What the rule says is narrower than the headline version. Where a health insurance issuer or Medicare paid a contracted provider, meaning in network, your recovery for that care is the amount actually paid plus your cost sharing, and not the amount billed. Cost sharing means copays, coinsurance and deductibles you have paid or still owe.

So if a hospital billed $60,000 and your health insurer settled the account for $18,000, your recovery for that care is the $18,000 plus your share, not the $60,000.

Act 466 of 2025 then made four changes, for suits filed on or after January 1, 2026.

The 40 percent award is gone. The old statute awarded you 40 percent of the gap between billed and paid, to compensate you for the cost of procuring that discount. Act 466 repealed it. This is the change that actually moves settlement numbers, and it is the one being misdescribed as the arrival of paid-not-billed.
The judge or jury now hears both numbers. Before, a jury was told only the amount billed, and the court adjusted the figure after the verdict.
A discount your own lawyer arranges now limits you. Where your attorney has pre-negotiated a reduced figure with your provider, your recovery for that care is what was actually paid under that agreement.
Automobile medical payments coverage is now excluded, alongside medical malpractice, which was already out.

None of this is a flat cap on medical bills. Subsection F of the statute says that for expenses outside the insurer-paid and Medicaid situations, your recovery "shall include" the amounts paid on your behalf and the amounts remaining owed to the provider, including anything secured by a privilege, lien or guarantee.

If you had no health insurance, or you were treated out of network, or a hospital is holding a lien on your case, the amount still owed is on the table. Act 466 made that provision more generous rather than less: it replaced "limited to" with "shall include".

Act 466 does carry an applicability clause, and it keys to filing. Prospective only, and it does not apply to causes of action filed before January 1, 2026. So the trigger really is the date the suit is filed and not the date you were hurt. Two people injured on the same afternoon in 2025 can land on opposite sides of it depending on when their lawyers file, which makes that timing a real decision.

Our page on medical bills and pain and suffering goes through what this does to the value of a claim.

No Pay, No Play went from $15,000 to $100,000

An uninsured driver cannot recover the first $100,000 in bodily injury damages. The old threshold was $15,000.

Act 16 of 2025 amended R.S. 32:866. A driver with $40,000 in injuries who was not insured used to recover $25,000. That same driver now usually recovers nothing, because the entire claim sits under the threshold.

Usually, not always, and this is the part that gets left out. R.S. 32:866(A)(3) switches the bar off completely if the other driver was cited for DWI and then convicted or pleaded no contest, intentionally caused the crash, fled the scene, or was committing a felony. A citation on its own is not enough; it takes the conviction or the plea. Subsection H exempts any vehicle that was legally parked. Passengers are protected separately under subsection E, unless the passenger owned the uninsured car. If any of that describes your crash, do not assume the threshold applies to you.

The second half of the statute gets almost no coverage. An uninsured owner or operator who is awarded $100,000 or less in bodily injury is assessed all court costs incurred by every party to the action, not just their own. Winning a small case can now cost you money.

Property damage moved to the same number. The statute now bars recovery of the first $100,000 of property damage as well as the first $100,000 of bodily injury. The amendment history printed on R.S. 32:866 ends with Acts 2025, No. 16, section 1.

Act 16 is a single section. It has no applicability clause and no effective-date section at all, so August 1, 2025 comes from the default in the Louisiana Constitution rather than from the act, and tying the threshold to the date of your crash is a reading of the general rule rather than statutory text. If your wreck is anywhere near that date, do not assume which threshold applies to you.

The Housley presumption is gone

Act 18 of 2025 repealed it, effective May 28, 2025, and replaced it with Code of Evidence article 306.1.

Housley gave a plaintiff who was healthy before an accident a presumption that the accident caused the condition that followed. That presumption no longer exists. You now prove causation directly, usually through treating physicians and medical records rather than through the timeline alone.

Act 18 states its own reach. Section 3 applies it prospectively only, and not to causes of action arising before its effective date.

It does not apply to workers' compensation claims.

What did not change

Plenty survived.

Auto insurance minimums are still 15/30/25. That is $15,000 for bodily injury to one person, $30,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage, under R.S. 32:900(B). Motorcycles carry the same minimums.
Louisiana's helmet law still applies to every rider. R.S. 32:190 requires a helmet made for motorcycle use that meets the state commissioner's specifications. The narrow exceptions are permitted parades and public exhibitions, and an autocycle fitted with a roll cage.
Dog bites are still strict liability under Civil Code article 2321, as long as the injury was preventable and you did not provoke the animal. Louisiana has never had a "first bite free" rule for dogs. The knowledge standard applies to animals other than dogs.
The medical malpractice cap is still $500,000, not counting future medical care. Two bills to raise it died in committee, and the 2026 session adjourned on June 1, 2026 without touching it.
The amount you have to be claiming before you can ask for a jury is still $10,000.
Punitive damages for drunk driving are unchanged. Louisiana calls them exemplary damages, under article 2315.4.
Workers' compensation still pays two thirds of your average weekly wage for temporary total disability, up to a weekly maximum that is reset every year.

Talk to a Lafayette injury lawyer

Brandt & Sherman has more than 50 years of combined experience handling injury claims across Acadiana and south Louisiana. We tracked these changes while they were still bills. They decide what our clients recover.

Call (337) 800-4000 or contact us online. The consultation is free, and there is no attorney fee unless we win. Clients may be responsible for costs and expenses.