Interruption and Suspension of Prescription Under Louisiana Law

In Louisiana, the interruption and suspension of prescription are two different ways the clock on a legal deadline can change: interruption wipes out the time that has already run and starts a new full period from zero, while suspension only pauses the clock, so when the pause ends, whatever time had already elapsed still counts. The rules live in Civil Code articles 3462 through 3472, and mixing them up is one of the fastest ways to lose a claim before it ever reaches a judge.

Louisiana uses the word “prescription” for what most states call a statute of limitations. Tort claims generally prescribe in one year.¹ Contract and other personal actions generally prescribe in ten.² Whatever the underlying period, the interruption and suspension rules operate against it: an interrupted one-year tort deadline resets to a fresh one year; a suspended ten-year contract deadline still has only ten years of running time available in total.

How Interruption Works

Interruption is the stronger mechanism. When prescription is interrupted, every day that had already run is erased, and a brand-new prescriptive period begins from the last day of the interruption.³ Eleven months into a one-year tort deadline, a valid interruption gives you a full year again once the interrupting event ends.

Filing a Lawsuit

The most common trigger is filing suit in a court that has both proper jurisdiction and proper venue. Once the petition is filed in the right court, prescription is interrupted and stays interrupted for as long as the case is pending.⁴⁵

File in the wrong court or wrong venue, and the filing alone does nothing. In that case, prescription is interrupted only if the defendant is actually served with process before the original period expires.⁴ Plaintiffs get caught by this more often than they should. A petition filed on the last day of the deadline in a court that turns out to lack jurisdiction, without timely service, leaves the claim dead.

There is a second catch. The interruption is treated as if it never happened if the plaintiff abandons the suit, voluntarily dismisses it, or fails to prosecute it at trial.⁵ A dismissal that results from a settlement does not count as a voluntary dismissal for this purpose. But filing a suit to stop the clock and then letting the case languish until it is dismissed for failure to prosecute puts you back at square one with all the original time gone.

Acknowledgment by the Debtor

A person who owes an obligation can also restart the clock by acknowledging the other side’s right. Under Article 3464, any acknowledgment of the creditor’s right interrupts prescription.⁶ Louisiana courts have recognized acknowledgments in many forms, including written letters, verbal promises, and conduct such as making a partial payment on a debt. Once a valid acknowledgment occurs, the full prescriptive period starts fresh.

How Suspension Works

Suspension is narrower. The general rule is that prescription runs against everyone, including absent persons and people with mental disabilities, unless a specific statute creates an exception.⁷⁸ Where an exception applies, the clock pauses. When the reason for the pause disappears, prescription resumes right where it stopped.⁹

Protected Relationships

Article 3469 suspends prescription between people whose relationship makes suing each other unworkable while it lasts:

Between spouses during the marriage
Between parents and children during the child’s minority
Between tutors and minors during the tutorship
Between curators and interdicts during the interdiction
Between caretakers and minors during the child’s minority¹⁰

Once the marriage ends, the child reaches majority, or the fiduciary relationship terminates, the clock resumes. If five months of a one-year period had already run before the marriage, the claimant-spouse has seven months after the divorce to file, not a fresh year.

What Suspension Does Not Cover

Louisiana does not automatically suspend prescription for mental incapacity as a general rule. Article 3468 says prescription runs against incompetents and absent persons unless a statute provides otherwise, and if no specific statute grants an exception, disability alone will not stop the clock. Medical malpractice illustrates the point: the three-year outer limit applies to all persons “whether or not infirm or under disability of any kind and including minors and interdicts.”¹¹

Emergency Legislation

The legislature has occasionally suspended prescription during catastrophic events. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, R.S. 9:5822 suspended all prescriptive and peremptive periods that would have lapsed between August 26, 2005, and January 3, 2006. R.S. 9:5824 allowed courts in the hardest-hit parishes to grant additional extensions of up to thirty days when the hurricane’s effects prevented timely filing.¹² These provisions are the exception rather than the norm.

Contra Non Valentem

Louisiana courts have long recognized an equitable doctrine, contra non valentem, that keeps prescription from running against a person who is unable to act.¹³ This is judge-made, not a Code provision, and it is applied sparingly in four situations:

A legal cause prevented the courts or their officers from acting
A condition connected with the contract or proceedings prevented the creditor from suing
The debtor did something that effectively prevented the creditor from acting, such as fraud or concealment¹⁴
The cause of action was not known or reasonably knowable to the plaintiff

The fourth category, the discovery rule, produces the most litigation. Prescription does not begin until the plaintiff knew or should reasonably have known about the cause of action.¹³ If your ignorance came from your own neglect, the rule will not save you. If a reasonable person in your position would not have discovered the injury or the responsible party any sooner, the period runs from the date of actual or constructive discovery instead of the date of the underlying act.

Peremption: The Deadline That Cannot Be Paused

Louisiana law separates prescription from peremption, and the distinction matters. A prescriptive period can be interrupted, suspended, or renounced. A peremptive period cannot be any of those.¹⁵ When a peremptive period expires, the right itself is destroyed, not just the remedy.

The three-year outer limit for medical malpractice under R.S. 9:5628 is peremptive. No amount of concealment or disability will extend it, and by its terms it applies even to minors and interdicts.¹¹ The only recognized exception to peremptive periods is fraud as defined in Civil Code Article 1953. If the deadline you are worried about is peremptive, nothing in the interruption or suspension articles will help you.

Federal Rules That Override State Prescription

State interruption and suspension rules govern most claims in Louisiana courts, but several federal statutes displace them in specific contexts.

Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the period of a servicemember’s active duty is excluded from any state or federal limitations period. The tolling applies automatically, without a court order, and covers redemption periods on real property, but it does not apply to internal revenue laws.¹⁶

When a debtor files for bankruptcy, 11 U.S.C. § 108(c) prevents the bankruptcy from killing a creditor’s claim. If the prescriptive period has not yet expired when the petition is filed, it will not expire until at least 30 days after the stay is lifted.¹⁷

For federal tax collection, the IRS generally has ten years from assessment. Several taxpayer actions suspend that period, including requesting an installment agreement, filing for bankruptcy, submitting an offer in compromise, and requesting innocent spouse relief. Military service in a combat zone also suspends the collection period, plus 180 days after the servicemember leaves the combat zone.¹⁸

Renunciation After the Period Has Run

A separate concept worth knowing sits at the far end of the timeline. Once prescription has fully accrued, the person who would benefit from it can give up that defense. This is called renunciation, and it is possible only after prescription has run. A contract clause that tries to waive prescription in advance is not valid.¹⁹

Renunciation can be express, through a clear verbal or written statement, or tacit, through conduct that shows the obligor has abandoned the benefit. Making payments on a debt after the deadline has passed can support a finding of tacit renunciation.¹⁹ Renouncing acquisitive prescription on immovable property must be in express written form; tacit renunciation will not work for land and buildings. Under Article 3471, parties also cannot contractually eliminate prescription or set a period longer than the one the law provides.

What Happens If the Deadline Passes

Once prescription accrues and the defendant raises it, the claim is over. A court that grants a motion to dismiss based on prescription typically dismisses with prejudice, so the plaintiff cannot refile.²⁰ The underlying right may still technically exist, but the ability to enforce it is gone.

Louisiana’s one-year tort deadline is among the shortest in the country, and the line between prescriptive periods that can be paused and peremptive periods that cannot is unforgiving. If a deadline is approaching and there is any doubt about whether interruption or suspension applies, getting legal advice before the clock runs out is the only reliable safeguard.

1
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3492 – Delictual Actions
2
Louisiana Civil Code Online. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3499 – Personal Actions
3
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3466 – Effect of Interruption
4
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3462 – Interruption by Filing of Action or by Service of Process
5
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3463 – Duration of Interruption
6
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3464 – Interruption by Acknowledgment
7
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3467 – Persons Against Whom Prescription Runs
8
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3468 – Incompetents
9
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3472 – Effect of Suspension
10
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3469 – Suspension of Prescription
11
FindLaw. Louisiana Revised Statutes Tit. 9, 5628 – Medical Malpractice
12
Supreme Court of Louisiana. Hunter Harris, III v. Elizabeth Stogner, et al.
13
Supreme Court of Louisiana. Whitnell v. Silverman
14
Louisiana Law Review. St. Charles Parish School Board v. GAF Corp. – Contra Non Valentem Applied to Nontort Prescription Statutes
15
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3461 – Renunciation, Interruption, or Suspension Ineffective
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 108 – Extension of Time
18
Internal Revenue Service. Time IRS Can Collect Tax
19
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3450 – Express or Tacit Renunciation
20
Legal Information Institute. With Prejudice