Louisiana Enacts Important Tort Reform Legislation

The Louisiana legislature enacted tort reform legislation in 2025 to address the increasing cost of insurance in Louisiana and to provide some predictability to the Louisiana legal system. While our colleagues, Jenny Michel and Jennifer Kretschmann, have provided an excellent and comprehensive analysis of the legislation in their article entitled “Louisiana State Legislature 2025 Regular Session: Tort Reform - Acts & Vetoed Insurance Bill,” which can be found here, this article examines the anticipated impact of the tort reform legislation on personal injury trials in federal and state courts in Louisiana.

The most significant reform involves the institution of a modified defense of contributory negligence, which went into effect on January 1, 2026. Since 1996, Louisiana had operated as a pure comparative fault state; the liability of each party whose fault caused damages was to be allocated among the respective parties based upon their appropriate percentage of fault, regardless of the legal theory of liability asserted against each party. Thus, a plaintiff 55 percent at fault could recover 45 percent of their damages from the liable defendants. The 2025 Tort Reform Amendments now prohibit a plaintiff in a personal injury action from recovering any damages if they are found to be 51 percent or more at fault for their damages. The 55 percent at-fault party in the example above is now prohibited from recovering any damages from any party. Importantly, this new legislation now requires the trial court to instruct the jury that if they find a plaintiff to be more than 50 percent at fault, then the plaintiff will not recover any damages.

It will be interesting to see how juries in Louisiana allocate fault to a plaintiff after receiving this instruction. It will also be interesting to see if defendants—in an appropriate venue with sufficient evidentiary support—file motions for summary judgment arguing that no reasonable juror could find that a plaintiff was less than 51 percent at fault in an effort to obtain summary judgment dismissing an at-fault plaintiff’s claim.

Another important reform has been the legislative removal of the “Housley Presumption” from Louisiana personal injury litigation. The Housley Presumption was created by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1991 to assist the finder of fact in evaluating the issue of causation when a plaintiff presents equivocal medical evidence to prove that their injuries resulted from an accident. The Housley Presumption arises when a plaintiff was asymptomatic and in good health before the accident but subsequently experiences disabling symptoms after the accident. If these symptoms continuously manifest themselves after the accident, and the medical evidence shows there is a reasonable possibility of a causal connection between the accident and the disabling condition, then the disability could be presumed to result from the accident. The presumption shifted the burden of proof to the defendant to show some other incident caused the pain. This presumption allowed plaintiffs to meet their burden of proof of causation based entirely on subjective complaints of pain made after an accident. The Housley Presumption was always subject to a plaintiff’s credibility, but because the presumption was presented to the jury through the court’s instructions, it was generally persuasive to the jury and allowed a jury to find that a plaintiff had been injured in an accident where the accident had caused no anatomical changes in the plaintiff. The Amendment now eliminates this presumption in its entirety. This specific Amendment went into effect on May 28, 2025, and only applies to causes of action arising after that date.

Louisiana is also one of a handful of states with “No Pay No Play” Legislation. No Pay No Play statutes limit an uninsured driver’s recovery for personal injuries and property damage when they file suit for damages arising from a motor vehicle accident. In Louisiana, the limit was tied to the minimum limits of insurance required by statute—$15,000 per person for bodily injury; $30,000 per accident for bodily injury; and $25,000 for property damage. Despite these relatively modest limits, Louisiana continues to have a high percentage of uninsured drivers. The Louisiana legislature addressed this issue by raising the penalties for uninsured motorists to prohibit them from recovering the first $100,000 in damages for personal injury and the first $100,000 for property damage. It should be noted that there are statutory exceptions to the application of the Louisiana No Pay No Play Statute, so it is important to review the statute itself to verify that it is applicable to an uninsured plaintiff in each applicable case. This Amendment went into effect on August 1, 2025.

The 2025 Amendments also limited the damages recoverable by an undocumented immigrant in a personal injury action. The Louisiana legislature has designated an undocumented immigrant as an “unauthorized alien” and defined them as someone “who is unlawfully present in the United States according to the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.” Prior to this Amendment, Louisiana allowed undocumented immigrants to file suit and recover damages for any personal injuries they can prove, without any limitation on their recoverable damages. As a practical matter, however, undocumented immigrants did not assert claims for lost wages because these damages rendered their immigration status admissible at trial. The 2025 Amendments now provide that unauthorized aliens can only recover past and future medical expenses, and explicitly prohibits recovery of lost wages or general damages. The Amendment is silent as to the recoverability of punitive damages by the unauthorized alien in the few situations where Louisiana allows for the award of such damages. The Amendment preserves the right of an unauthorized alien to assert a UM claim if they are an insured under a policy providing UM coverage. This Amendment went into effect on August 1, 2025. It is unclear at this time whether the new statute applies retroactively to lawsuits filed prior to that date.

Finally, the 2025 Amendments addressed the recoverability of past medical expenses by plaintiffs, with changes that went into effect on January 1, 2026. For many years, Louisiana followed the collateral source rule and allowed a plaintiff to recover the amount charged to them by the healthcare provider, without any consideration given as to the amount actually paid to the provider. The Louisiana courts began to whittle away at this rule by eliminating “attorney discounts” from inflating the actual cost charged by the healthcare provider and then by limiting the recovery of medical expenses to any amounts actually paid by Medicaid or a worker’s compensation carrier. Louisiana then enacted legislation to provide a modified collateral source rule for payments made by a health insurer, but this rule was often circumvented through the use of medical funding companies. The 2025 Amendments sought to further limit the amount of past medical expenses that could be awarded in a personal injury action. Now, a plaintiff may only recover the amounts actually paid by Medicare, Medicaid, or a health insurer, along with any co-pays and deductibles made by the plaintiff. This does not apply to any amounts paid pursuant to an automobile liability insurer’s med pay coverage. If the medical payments are made pursuant to “pre-negotiated agreements” with medical providers where the medical provider has agreed to accept an amount less than the amount billed, then a plaintiff can only recover the amount paid to the healthcare provider and not the amount charged by a third party—i.e., the amount claimed by a medical funding company.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.