Liberative prescription in Louisiana is the civil-law version of a statute of limitations: a deadline that extinguishes your right to bring a lawsuit if you wait too long to file. Once the period runs out, the defendant can raise prescription as a defense and the court will dismiss your case, no matter how strong the underlying claim. How long you actually have depends on what kind of claim you’re bringing — two years for most injury cases, three years for unpaid wages and open accounts, five years for promissory notes, and ten years as a catch-all for everything else. A 2024 change doubled the deadline for tort claims from one year to two, but only for injuries sustained on or after July 1, 2024.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3493.1 – Delictual Actions
What Liberative Prescription Does to Your Claim
Louisiana recognizes three kinds of prescription — acquisitive (gaining ownership through long possession), liberative (losing the right to sue through inaction), and prescription of nonuse (losing a right you never exercised).2Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3445 – Kinds of Prescription Liberative prescription is the one that governs lawsuits. Article 3447 defines it as a mode of barring actions when the creditor fails to exercise their right within the time the law provides.3Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3447 – Liberative Prescription
The court won’t check the calendar for you. Prescription is an affirmative defense: the defendant has to raise it. But once raised, dismissal is almost automatic. There is no equitable exception for sympathetic facts, severe injuries, or honest mistakes about the deadline.
How Long You Have to File
Prescriptive periods in the Civil Code range from two years to ten, assigned by the nature of the claim.
Two Years: Tort and Personal Injury
Car accidents, slip-and-falls, defamation, and any other claim where someone’s fault caused you harm fall under what Louisiana calls “delictual actions.” You have two years from the day the injury or damage occurred to file suit.1Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3493.1 – Delictual Actions
This two-year window is new. Before July 1, 2024, Louisiana gave tort plaintiffs just one year, which was one of the shortest deadlines in the country. Act 423 of 2024 repealed the old one-year rule under Article 3492 and replaced it with the current two-year period under Article 3493.1.4Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3492 – Repealed The change is not retroactive. If your injury happened before July 1, 2024, the old one-year deadline still governs your claim.
Act 423 also created Article 3493.3, which sets a separate prescriptive period for tort claims arising from conduct defined as a crime of violence under Louisiana’s criminal code. If your injury came from violent criminal conduct, check which deadline applies to your specific situation.
Three Years: Wages, Rent, Loans, Open Accounts
Article 3494 groups several financial claims under a three-year prescriptive period:5Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3494 – Actions Subject to a Three-Year Prescription
- Compensation for services, including unpaid wages, salaries, commissions, and professional fees.
- Rent and annuity arrearages.
- Money lent on informal terms.
- Open accounts, such as a running tab with a supplier.
- Mineral royalty disputes, other than those involving state-owned properties.
The three-year clock starts when payment becomes due, not when the work was done. A contractor who finishes a job in March and invoices for payment thirty days later starts the clock on the invoice due date.
Five Years: Promissory Notes and Other Instruments
Actions on promissory notes and other financial instruments, whether negotiable or not, carry a five-year period that starts when payment becomes due.6Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3498 – Actions on Negotiable and Nonnegotiable Instruments A note with monthly installments produces a new five-year clock for each missed payment. A note payable on demand starts running when the holder demands payment.
Ten Years: General Personal Actions
Any personal action that doesn’t fit a shorter prescriptive period defaults to ten years.7Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3499 – Personal Action Breach-of-contract claims live here, along with many property-related disputes and other civil matters the legislature hasn’t assigned a specific deadline. Ten years sounds like plenty of room, but the clock runs whether you realize you have a claim or not.
When the Clock Starts and How Days Are Counted
Louisiana’s counting rules are precise. The day the injury happens or the payment becomes due does not count as day one. Counting starts the following day.8Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3454 – Computation of Time If the last day of the period falls on a legal holiday, the deadline extends to the end of the next business day. If your two-year tort deadline would land on Christmas, you have until December 26, or later if that date is also a holiday.
These rules apply to every prescriptive period in the Code. Miscounting by a single day can either save or kill a claim.
Pausing or Resetting the Clock
Two mechanisms can change a running prescriptive period: suspension and interruption. They behave very differently.
Interruption wipes the slate clean. When prescription is interrupted, all the time that had already run is erased, and a brand-new period begins once the interruption ends.9Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3466 – Effect of Interruption Two things typically cause interruption. Filing a lawsuit in a court with proper jurisdiction and venue interrupts prescription against the defendant you’ve sued.10Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3462 – Interruption by Filing of Action or by Service of Process Acknowledgment by the person who owes you the debt or obligation also interrupts prescription and restarts the clock.11Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3464 – Interruption by Acknowledgment A partial payment on a debt can qualify, which matters in commercial disputes where the parties are still in contact.
Suspension only pauses the clock. Time that already ran still counts, and the period picks up where it left off when the suspension ends.12Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3472 – Effect of Suspension As a baseline, prescription runs against everyone, including minors and people under interdiction, unless a specific statute carves out an exception.13Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3468 – Incompetents The clock does not automatically stop for someone who can’t practically file a lawsuit.
The most important statutory suspension applies to medical malpractice. Before suing a qualified healthcare provider, you must file a request for review with a medical review panel through the Division of Administration. Filing that request suspends prescription until 90 days after you’re notified by certified mail of the panel’s opinion.14FindLaw. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 40, Section 1231.8 – Medical Review Panel Two traps: the request must go to the Division of Administration specifically, and if you don’t pay the filing fee or secure a waiver within 45 days, the request is treated as if it were never filed, so no suspension occurs.
Contra Non Valentem
Louisiana courts have long recognized a judicial doctrine that can suspend prescription when it would be unjust to let the deadline run. Known as contra non valentem, the doctrine is not written into any statute but has been consistently applied as an implied exception.15United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Rogers v. Corrosion Products, Inc. Courts apply it in four situations:
- Some legal obstacle prevented the courts from hearing the claim.
- A condition connected to the contract or proceeding prevented you from suing.
- The defendant actively did something to stop you from pursuing your claim.16Supreme Court of Louisiana. Whitnell v. Silverman
- The cause of action was not known or reasonably knowable, even without deliberate concealment.
The fourth category is Louisiana’s version of the “discovery rule” used in other states. It protects people with latent injuries, such as a slow-developing illness from toxic exposure, who had no reasonable way to know they’d been harmed before the standard period ran. Courts apply this exception narrowly, and you carry the burden of showing the harm truly was not discoverable sooner.
Peremption Is Different and Harsher
Louisiana draws a sharp line between prescription and peremption. Prescription bars your remedy. Peremption destroys the underlying right entirely, as if it never existed.17Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 3458 – Peremption Effect The practical difference matters. Prescription can be interrupted, suspended, and reset by acknowledgment. Peremption cannot. Once a peremptive period runs, there is no mechanism to revive the claim. Some Louisiana statutes impose peremptive rather than prescriptive deadlines, and medical malpractice claims carry both a prescriptive period and a separate peremptive outer limit. If you don’t know which type of deadline governs your claim, that question alone is worth a consultation with a Louisiana attorney.
If the Deadline Has Already Passed
Expiration gives the defendant a complete affirmative defense. The strength of your underlying claim becomes irrelevant. The only paths around an expired period are the doctrines above: proving the clock was interrupted or suspended, or that contra non valentem should apply. Each argument carries its own burden of proof, and courts scrutinize them carefully. If you believe one of these might save your claim, talk to a Louisiana attorney quickly — the longer you wait after a missed deadline, the harder these arguments get.
The safer approach, always, is to treat the prescriptive deadline as absolute and file well before it runs. Counting rules, suspensions, and the question of which period applies to a particular claim are the kinds of details that reward careful attention long before the final weeks of the clock.