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Louisiana rewrote its insurance bad faith law on July 1, 2024, and most of what you will read online about denied claims in this state is now out of date.
The statute policyholders and lawyers cited for decades, La. R.S. 22:1973, no longer exists. It was repealed. The duties it created moved into La. R.S. 22:1892, the deadlines changed, the penalty formula changed, and the window to bring a penalty claim under those provisions shrank from ten years to two.
That last change is the one that costs people their cases.
At Brandt & Sherman, our Lafayette insurance claim denial attorneys handle wrongful denials and bad faith claims under the current law. You pay no attorney fee unless we win. Clients may be responsible for costs and expenses.
Louisiana puts your insurer on a clock, and the clock is written into La. R.S. 22:1892.
For a standard property damage or medical expense claim:
For a catastrophic loss, meaning a loss from a natural disaster, windstorm, or significant weather event covered by a presidential or gubernatorial emergency declaration, the clock to begin adjusting stretches to 30 days under La. R.S. 22:1892(A)(3), and the payment deadlines in La. R.S. 22:1892.2 take over for residential and other immovable property:
Miss those deadlines without a good reason and the insurer owes you more than the claim.
One distinction matters for the penalty. The duty to pay in Subsection A runs from satisfactory proof of loss. The penalty in Subsection B for failing to pay requires satisfactory written proof and a demand for payment. The written-offer penalty needs only satisfactory proof of loss. Make the demand in writing and keep the date.
One detail matters more than it looks. Under La. R.S. 22:1892.3, enacted by Acts 2025 No. 500, if your insurer requires a proof of loss form as a condition of payment, its receipt of your completed form is the only thing that satisfies the proof-of-loss element, which is what starts the payment and written-offer clocks. An incomplete form does not. The clock to begin adjusting still runs from the day you report the loss. The insurer has ten business days to tell you whether what you sent was complete.
Bad faith is not "the insurer was unfair to me." It is a legal standard. For a late-payment penalty, Louisiana states it as three tests: arbitrary, capricious, or without probable cause.
A denial can be wrong without being arbitrary. If your insurer read an exclusion the wrong way after actually investigating, that is a coverage dispute, and you can still win it. Bad faith is what happens when the insurer had no reasonable basis for what it did.
La. R.S. 22:1892(I) lists five specific acts that breach the insurer's duty of good faith when the insurer commits them knowingly. Four of them require no showing that the insurer was arbitrary. The fifth, failing to pay a claim under La. R.S. 22:1893, does:
The repealed statute carried a longer list. If a page you are reading recites more than these five, check whether it is quoting law that no longer applies.
The penalty is set by formula, not by a jury's sense of fairness.
Where an insurer breaches its duty of good faith on a claim that does not involve immovable property, La. R.S. 22:1892(I) makes it liable for any proven economic damages you sustained, and a court may award penalties on top, up to 50% of the damages sustained or $5,000, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees and costs. The economic damages are mandatory. The penalty is discretionary.
For a straightforward failure to pay or to make a written offer, La. R.S. 22:1892(B) applies to any claim other than a catastrophic loss to immovable property, including auto claims. It allows 50% of the amount found to be due, plus any proven economic damages, or $1,000, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs.
For catastrophic losses on immovable property, La. R.S. 22:1892.2 allows 50% of the amount found to be due, plus proven economic damages, or $2,500, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees and costs.
Separately, if your insurer never starts adjusting your claim inside the 14 days, or 30 for a catastrophic loss, La. R.S. 22:1892(A)(3) carries its own penalty: the greater of $5,000 or the amount available under Subsection I.
Attorney fees and costs are recoverable under each of these. Under 22:1892(B) and 22:1892.2 the penalty and fees are mandatory once the conduct is found arbitrary, capricious, or without probable cause. Under 22:1892(I) the award is within the court's discretion.
You cannot collect two bad-faith penalties for the same failure. The statute sends catastrophic losses to immovable property to 22:1892.2, and sends immovable-property claims away from Subsection I. Which provision governs your claim is a question for a lawyer, and the courts have barely begun to interpret the 2024 architecture.
If your claim is a catastrophic loss, you have to give your insurer 60 days written notice before you can bring a penalty claim under La. R.S. 22:1892.2.
This is a condition precedent to an action under La. R.S. 22:1892.2, which means it is not a formality. It conditions the penalty claim, not a suit on the policy itself. File suit without sending the notice first and the case is automatically stayed. If the insurer then pays the full amount you demanded within the 60 days, your prematurely filed suit can be dismissed and you can be taxed with the costs.
The notice also gives the insurer a way to cut its exposure. If it pays the full noticed amount inside 60 days, together with your claimed expenses and attorney fees up to 20% of the amount demanded, there is no further cause of action on that demand at all. If it pays only part, the penalty on the amount it did pay is halved. The real benefit to you is timing: send the notice inside the last 90 days before prescription runs and the clock is suspended until 30 days after the insurer responds.
This is a rule most policyholders will never find on their own. It is one of the better reasons to call a lawyer before sending anything.
Louisiana added something in 2024 that did not exist before: a duty of good faith that runs in the other direction.
Under La. R.S. 22:1892(J), you and anyone acting for you owe your insurer good faith when asserting a claim. Submitting an estimate with no good faith evidentiary basis, misrepresenting facts, or failing to meet your own obligations under the policy can all count against you.
It does not give the insurer a separate lawsuit. What it does is worse in practice. If the fact finder decides you violated this section, it must weigh that when deciding whether to award you penalties or attorney fees at all.
Adjusters know this provision exists. Most policyholders do not. That asymmetry is the whole argument for getting counsel involved before you start negotiating on your own.
Two years, and the clock you care about probably is not the one you think.
Penalties and attorney fees under La. R.S. 22:1892(B) and 22:1892.2 prescribe in two years. For those claims, that two-year period replaced the ten-year period Louisiana courts applied before the 2024 rewrite, so any page still telling you that you have a decade is quoting superseded law. What governs a penalty claim under Subsection I, which contains no prescription clause of its own, is an open question worth asking a lawyer about early.
Your suit on the policy itself is governed by the limitation clause in your policy. Louisiana caps how short that can be: a first-party property policy cannot cut you off sooner than 24 months from the inception of the loss under La. R.S. 22:868(B). Note what that runs from. Not the date you filed the claim, not the date of the denial letter. The date the damage happened. Hurricane claimants lose cases to this every year.
If your claim involves an injury rather than a policy dispute, Louisiana's general deadline is two years from the date the injury was sustained (La. Civ. Code art. 3493.1), for injuries on or after July 1, 2024. Injuries before that date keep the older one-year period.
Deadlines in insurance cases stack and they do not forgive. Call someone before one of them runs.
Insurers make money collecting premiums, not paying benefits, and that incentive shows up in the denials we see.
Some denials are legitimate. A loss really can fall outside a policy. But many are built on vague language or technicalities that do not survive a close reading. A car accident victim is told injuries "don't meet policy standards" despite clear medical records. A homeowner is told storm damage was "wear and tear." A health insurer calls a surgery "not medically necessary" while the treating physician disagrees.
Louisiana courts generally read ambiguous policy language in favor of coverage. That principle wins cases.
Our attorneys challenge denials across every line of coverage a Louisiana family is likely to carry.
One limit worth stating plainly. La. R.S. 22:1892 does not apply to life or health and accident policies, and it excludes workers' compensation claims. Those denials are still worth fighting, but the penalty provisions on this page are not the tool, and the analysis is different.
In 2025, Louisiana homeowners insurers opened about 2.5 times as many claim lawsuits per claim closed without payment as the median state.
The NAIC's 2025 market conduct scorecards collect claim data from insurers in every state. For data year 2025, Louisiana insurers opened lawsuits at a rate of 3.05% of homeowners claims closed without payment, against a national median of 1.23%. That ranked Louisiana 5th of 52 jurisdictions. On private passenger auto, Louisiana came in 7th at 5.84%, against a 3.07% median.
That is a measure of how much litigation Louisiana homeowners claims generate, normalized against the claims that closed with nothing paid. It is the number that says something distinctive about this state.
For context on volume: 33.76% of Louisiana homeowners claims closed in 2025 closed with no payment to the policyholder, along with 26.49% of private passenger auto claims. Read that carefully, because the category is broader than it sounds. It includes outright denials, but it also includes claims that came in under the deductible and claims where no policy was in force. Louisiana's named-storm deductibles are large, which pushes that number up on its own. On this measure Louisiana sits 12th of 52 for homeowners and 15th for auto, close to the middle.
The share of claims that close without payment is ordinary. The lawsuit rate is not.
File one. Then understand what it can and cannot do for you.
An LDI complaint is free, and in fiscal year 2024-2025 the process returned $5.7 million to Louisiana property and casualty policyholders, on 2,374 property and casualty complaints received that year, according to LDI's annual report. LDI acknowledges your complaint with a file number, assigns a compliance examiner, asks your insurer to explain its position, and sends you the result. The department reports an average investigation of 23 days.
Here is the part that matters. In both FY2023-2024 and FY2024-2025, 20% of property and casualty complaints closed favorably to the consumer. About 37% closed neutral in the most recent year, and LDI's own coding sends complaints turning on "questions of fact or law" or "the filing of a lawsuit" into that neutral bucket.
LDI states its own limits directly. From its most recent annual report: "the complaint process is a neutral compliance inquiry, and a consumer complaint may or may not result in a claim payment or premium refund from the insurer or producer depending on the facts of the complaint. The complaint process cannot be used in lieu of the judicial court system."
LDI's consumer guide is equally clear that the department cannot give you legal advice, decide who was at fault, resolve disputes of medical fact or opinion, or determine the facts of a contested claim.
So: file the complaint. It costs nothing and it creates a paper record your insurer has to answer in writing. Just do not treat it as your remedy, because when the fight is genuinely about the facts, LDI is the wrong forum by its own account.
If you and your insurer agree that the loss is covered but disagree on what it is worth, you may not need a lawsuit.
La. R.S. 22:1892(G) requires residential property policies in Louisiana to carry an appraisal clause. Either side can demand appraisal when the parties fail to agree on the amount of loss. Each picks an appraiser, the two appraisers pick an umpire, and an agreement between any two of them sets the amount.
Appraisal settles valuation. It does not settle coverage. If your insurer says the damage is not covered at all, appraisal is not the path.
Most denials are worth challenging in writing before anyone files anything.
Property and auto policies have no statutory appeal process. What they have are deadlines in the policy itself, for submitting proof of loss and for filing suit. Read those dates before anything else, and note that Louisiana does not let a first-party property policy cut off your right to sue sooner than 24 months from the loss. Most employer plans and ACA marketplace plans work differently: federal rules give you at least 180 days to file an internal appeal. A strong submission backed by medical records, repair estimates, engineering reports, or weather data can reverse a denial without litigation.
Appeals work best when the denial came from missing documentation or a misreading of your records. A lawsuit becomes the answer when the insurer digs in, when the denial was arbitrary, capricious, or without probable cause, or when a statutory deadline has already been blown. And if the loss is catastrophic, remember that the 60-day cure notice has to go out before you can bring the penalty claim.
We start with the two documents that decide most of these cases: your policy and the denial letter.
We read them line by line against each other, because the reason in the letter often does not match anything in the policy. From there we gather medical records, repair estimates, police reports, and photographs, and we bring in engineers, physicians, or appraisers when the insurer's position needs a technical answer. If the internal process fails, we subpoena the insurer's claim file and adjuster notes, which is where the record of what the company actually knew tends to live.
We prepare every denial case as though it will be tried.
Families across Acadiana bring us the letter that said no.
Our attorneys bring more than 35 years of combined experience, and this firm has been fighting insurance companies in Acadiana for over 50. We handle wrongful denials and bad faith claims under the current statutes, not the version that was repealed in 2024, and we move fast, because the deadlines here are short and unforgiving.
Insurers deny claims for a mix of legitimate and illegitimate reasons: a genuine policy exclusion, an allegation that your injuries pre-existed the loss, a missed reporting deadline, or an incomplete proof of loss. Some denials do not survive a careful reading of the policy. Louisiana courts generally interpret ambiguous policy language in favor of coverage, so a denial that rests on vague or strained wording is worth challenging. Bring the denial letter and the policy to a lawyer and have both read against each other.
No. A denial can be wrong without being bad faith. Louisiana's standard is whether the insurer acted arbitrarily, capriciously, or without probable cause. An insurer that investigated your claim and misread an exclusion has given you a coverage dispute, which you can still win. An insurer that denied without a reasonable basis, misrepresented your coverage, or sat on a written settlement has given you a bad faith claim under La. R.S. 22:1892, which opens penalties and attorney fees on top of the claim itself.
La. R.S. 22:1892 and La. R.S. 22:1892.2. Louisiana rewrote this area of law effective July 1, 2024. The statute many sources still cite, La. R.S. 22:1973, was repealed in its entirety, and its duty of good faith and fair dealing moved into Subsection I of 22:1892. La. R.S. 22:1892.2 was created to handle catastrophic losses, with its own deadlines, its own penalty, and a mandatory 60-day pre-suit notice.
It depends on which provision applies. For claims not involving immovable property, penalties run up to 50% of the damages sustained or $5,000, whichever is greater. For non-catastrophic claims, including auto and non-catastrophic property claims, 50% of the amount found to be due plus any proven economic damages, or $1,000, whichever is greater. For catastrophic immovable property losses, 50% plus proven economic damages, or $2,500, whichever is greater. Attorney fees and costs are recoverable in all three. You cannot stack penalties for the same failure.
Claims for penalties and attorney fees under La. R.S. 22:1892(B) and 22:1892.2 prescribe in two years. That replaced the ten-year period Louisiana courts applied before 2024, so older articles telling you there is no rush are wrong. Your suit on the policy itself runs on the limitation clause in your policy, which for first-party property coverage cannot be shorter than 24 months from the inception of the loss. That runs from the date of the damage, not the date of the denial.
Yes, if the loss qualifies as a catastrophic loss. La. R.S. 22:1892.2(C)(1) makes 60 days written notice a condition precedent to a penalty action under that Section. It does not condition a suit on the policy itself. File first and your case is automatically stayed, and if the insurer pays the full demand inside those 60 days, a prematurely filed suit can be dismissed at your cost. Notice sent in the last 90 days before prescription also suspends the clock until 30 days after the insurer responds.
Yes, and do not stop there. An LDI complaint is free and creates a written record your insurer must answer. In FY2024-2025 the process recovered $5.7 million for property and casualty policyholders. But only 20% of P&C complaints close favorably to the consumer, and LDI states in its own annual report that the complaint process "cannot be used in lieu of the judicial court system." When a claim turns on contested facts, LDI is not the forum that resolves it.
Often, yes. A partial payment does not automatically waive the rest of your claim, and insurers sometimes issue one specifically to discourage you from pursuing the full value. Louisiana's penalty provisions even contemplate partial payment, calculating the penalty on the difference between what was tendered and what was actually due. Have a lawyer review the policy, the correspondence, and the scope of your losses before assuming the check you received is all you are owed.
Ask about appraisal. La. R.S. 22:1892(G) requires Louisiana residential property policies to include an appraisal clause, letting either side demand appraisal when the parties cannot agree on the amount of loss. Each party names an appraiser, those two select an umpire, and an agreement between any two of them fixes the amount. Appraisal resolves valuation only. If your insurer is denying coverage outright, appraisal will not help you.
You are not required to have one. But Louisiana's 2024 rewrite added a duty of good faith that runs against the policyholder too, and under La. R.S. 22:1892(J) your own conduct during the claim is now weighed when a court decides whether to award you penalties and fees at all. Adjusters know that provision is there. Getting counsel involved before you negotiate on your own is the practical answer.
A denial letter is not the final word, and the deadline to do something about it is shorter than it used to be.
Call Brandt & Sherman for a free consultation. We will read your policy and your denial letter, tell you which statute applies to your claim, and explain your options. No attorney fee unless we win; clients may be responsible for costs and expenses.
A denial letter doesn’t have to be the final word. Call Brandt & Sherman today for a free consultation with a Lafayette denied insurance claim lawyer. We’ll review your policy, explain your options, and fight to get you the coverage you were promised. With us, you’ll never pay fees unless we win.
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