Personal Injury

Personal injury law (also known as tort law) allows an injured person to go to civil court and get a legal remedy (damages) for all losses stemming from an accident or other incident. A few examples of negligence include car accidents, slip and falls, trip and falls, and dog bites In each instance, the responsible party ignored the risk posed to others, and as a result, the plaintiff was injured.

Louisiana Civil Code Art. 2315 states: “Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it.” “Damages may include loss of consortium, service, and society, and shall be recoverable by the same respective categories of persons who would have had a cause of action for wrongful death of an injured person. Damages do not include costs for future medical treatment, services, surveillance, or procedures of any kind unless such treatment, services, surveillance, or procedures are directly related to a manifest physical or mental injury or disease.  Damages shall include any sales taxes paid by the owner on the repair or replacement of the property damaged.” LA CC Art. 2315.

Workers’ Compensation

Workers’ compensation is a state-mandated insurance program that provides benefits to employees who suffer job-related injuries and illnesses. In general, an employee with a work-related illness or injury can get workers’ compensation benefits regardless of who was at fault—the employee, the employer, a coworker, a customer, or some other third party.¹

Successions and Wills

A succession is the process of settling a deceased person’s estate and distributing the property to the heirs after the debts are paid. This process is called probate in other states. The term “succession” may also be used to refer to the estate a person leaves behind at death.²

Just calling a document a “Last Will and Testament” does not make it valid under Louisiana law.  Louisiana has specific requirements that must be satisfied before a document will be considered a valid Louisiana will. It is important for the Last Will and Testament to be in the required form.  Unless the document calls within one of the categories of Louisiana Last Will and Testament forms, it will not be sufficient to leave property at death (called a disposition mortis causa in Louisiana).  The Last Will Testament will be unenforceable and deceased person’s assets will be distributed under Louisiana intestate law.³

If a person dies without a valid Last Will and Testament in Louisiana, he or she is said to have died intestate.  His or her estate will be handled by intestate succession.  This means that the deceased person’s assets will be distributed under Louisiana intestate law.⁴

Traffic Tickets

A traffic ticket is a notice issued by a law enforcement official to a motorist or other road user, indicating that the user has violated traffic laws.  Traffic tickets generally come in two forms, citing a moving violation, such as exceeding the speed limit, or a non-moving violation, such as a parking violation, with the ticket also being referred to as a parking citation, notice of illegal parking or parking ticket.⁵

Notary aka Notary Public

A notary public (or notary or public notary) is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney. A notary’s main functions are to administer oaths and affirmations, take affidavits and statutory declarations, witness and authenticate the execution of certain classes of documents, take acknowledgments of deeds and other conveyances.⁷

Family Law

Louisiana family law matters can range from divorce, to child support, to child custody battles and much more.⁸