Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315: Elements, Damages, and Deadlines

Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315 is the foundation of nearly every personal injury and wrongful death claim in the state. Its rule is short: every act of a person that causes damage to another obligates the one at fault to repair it.¹ From that single sentence, Louisiana courts derive liability for negligence, recklessness, intentional harm, and the related claims for wrongful death and loss of consortium. Several changes that took effect January 1, 2026, reshape how damages are calculated and how shared fault is handled.

What the Article Actually Says

The language of Article 2315 is deliberately broad. It does not list accident types or injury categories. It sets a universal principle: cause harm through your fault, and you owe compensation.

The article also fixes two rules about what counts as recoverable damage. Future medical treatment and related procedures are compensable only when tied to a demonstrated physical or mental injury or disease. And when your property is damaged, any sales tax you pay on repair or replacement is part of your damages.¹

The Four Elements You Have to Prove

A claim under Article 2315 rises or falls on four elements. Miss one and the case ends.

Duty. The defendant owed you a legal obligation not to expose you to unreasonable risk. Every driver owes this to every other person on the road; a store owes it to shoppers; a doctor owes it to a patient.
Breach. The defendant failed to meet that duty. This is the “fault” the statute names.
Causation. The breach actually caused your injury. Louisiana courts ask this two ways. Would the injury have happened anyway without the defendant’s conduct? If yes, causation fails. Was the defendant’s conduct a substantial factor in producing harm, and was the kind of injury you suffered reasonably foreseeable?
Damages. You suffered real, measurable harm. Reckless conduct without an injury produces no claim.

Causation is where most disputes live. Defendants rarely deny they owed a duty or that something bad happened. They deny that what they did is why it happened.

What You Can Recover

Damages under Article 2315 split into two broad buckets.

Economic Damages

Economic damages are the losses with a dollar figure attached: medical bills, lost wages, reduced future earning capacity, and repair or replacement of damaged property. Receipts, pay records, and expert testimony carry the proof.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages compensate for harm that’s real but harder to price: physical pain, mental anguish, emotional distress, and the diminished ability to enjoy life the way you did before.

Loss of Consortium

Article 2315 also allows recovery for loss of consortium, service, and society. This claim belongs to family members, not the injured person, and compensates them for the disruption the injury caused to their relationship. The relatives who can bring it are the same categories eligible to file a wrongful death action if the injured person had died.¹

Exemplary Damages for Drunk Driving

Louisiana usually does not allow punitive damages in tort cases. Drunk driving is the notable exception. Under Article 2315.4, if intoxication while driving was a cause of the accident and the driver acted with wanton or reckless disregard for others’ safety, the court may award exemplary damages on top of ordinary compensation.² These awards function as punishment rather than pure compensation.

Survival and Wrongful Death Claims

When someone dies because of another person’s fault, Article 2315 branches into two related claims. They’re usually filed together, but they compensate different losses and belong to different people.

The survival action under Article 2315.1 recovers damages the deceased personally experienced between the injury and death: their pain, their medical expenses, and other losses they endured while alive. If death was instantaneous, there may be no survival claim, because there was no period of conscious suffering.³

The wrongful death action under Article 2315.2 compensates the family for their own losses: grief, loss of love and companionship, and loss of financial support.⁴

Both use the same rigid hierarchy of who is allowed to file. Only one tier recovers. If anyone in a higher tier survives, the lower tiers are shut out entirely:³⁴

Surviving spouse and children, or either.
Surviving parents, only if no spouse or child survives.
Surviving siblings, only if no spouse, child, or parent survives.
Surviving grandparents, only if no one in a higher tier survives.

Adoptive relationships count. A child given up for adoption still qualifies as a child or sibling. A parent who abandoned the deceased during childhood is treated as if they did not survive, which blocks an absent parent from collecting for a child they walked away from.⁴

When an Employer Is on the Hook

Article 2315 identifies the person at fault, but Civil Code Article 2320 often pulls in a second, deeper-pocketed defendant. Employers are responsible for harm caused by their employees acting within the scope of their job, a doctrine known as respondeat superior.⁵

Two conditions apply. The employee must have been performing job duties when the harm occurred, and the employer must have had the ability to prevent the act but failed to do so. An employee who causes an accident on a personal errand at lunch usually does not create employer liability. Independent contractors fall outside this rule entirely, which is why the employee-versus-contractor distinction matters so much in injury cases.

Comparative Fault: The 51 Percent Bar

As of January 1, 2026, Louisiana uses a modified comparative fault system under Article 2323. If your share of fault is 51 percent or more, you recover nothing. If it’s below 51 percent, your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault.⁶ A plaintiff with $100,000 in damages who is 30 percent at fault recovers $70,000.

This replaced Louisiana’s former pure comparative fault rule, which allowed reduced recovery even for a plaintiff who was 99 percent at fault. Under the old system, being mostly responsible for your own accident still left you with a partial claim. Under the current one, crossing the 51 percent line means walking away with nothing.

Limits on What You Can Collect

Establishing liability is only half the picture. Louisiana caps damages in certain categories and, as of 2026, restricts how medical expenses are proved at trial.

The Collateral Source Rule (2026 Change)

Under R.S. 9:2800.27, effective January 1, 2026, you can only recover the amount actually paid to your medical providers, not the higher amount originally billed, when your bills were covered by health insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid.⁷ The same rule applies when your attorney has a pre-negotiated agreement with a provider to accept a reduced payment as full compensation. You can still recover copays and deductibles you personally owed. The jury sees both the billed amount and the amount actually paid. Because billed charges often exceed what insurers pay, this change reduces the medical expense component of many claims.

Medical Malpractice Cap

Claims against qualified healthcare providers under the Louisiana Medical Malpractice Act are capped at $500,000 in total damages per patient, exclusive of future medical care. No single qualified provider can be held liable for more than $100,000 of that total, with amounts above that share paid from the Patient Compensation Fund.⁸ Legislation has been introduced in the 2026 session that would raise these limits, but the $500,000 cap remains in effect as of this writing.

Government Liability Cap

Claims against the state or a political subdivision have their own ceiling. General damages for personal injury or wrongful death against a government entity cannot exceed $500,000 per person. That cap applies only to non-economic damages; economic losses like medical bills, lost earnings, and future lost income are excluded.⁹

Filing Deadlines

Louisiana calls its statute of limitations “prescription,” and missing it extinguishes your right to sue permanently. There is no grace period.

The general prescriptive period for personal injury claims was extended from one year to two years by Act 423 of the 2024 legislative session. The clock starts on the day of injury.

Wrongful death and survival actions have their own rule: they prescribe one year from the death or two years from the date of injury, whichever period is longer.³ Medical malpractice wrongful death claims are shorter: one year from the date of death, with no alternative two-year window.⁴

1
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2315 – Liability for Acts Causing Damages
2
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2315.4 – Additional Damages; Intoxicated Defendant
3
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2315.1 – Survival Action
4
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2315.2 – Wrongful Death Action
5
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2320 – Acts of Servants, Students or Apprentices
6
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code 2323 – Comparative Fault
7
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:2800.27 – Recoverable Past Medical Expenses; Collateral Sources; Limitations; Evidence
8
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 40:1231.2 – Malpractice Liability
9
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 13:5106 – Limitations