Personal injury lawyers

What a personal injury claim is made of

The legal basis is Civil Code article 2315: an act that causes damage to another obliges the person at fault to repair it. In practice a claim has two parts. Special damages are the calculable losses: medical expenses, lost wages, the figures three people would price the same way. General damages cover pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life, and three experienced adjusters will value those three different ways.

That is why a firm number at the first call is a warning sign rather than a show of confidence. The figure moves with every diagnosis and every procedure.

The medical record is the case

Consistent treatment, no missed appointments, and a physician who records how the injury relates to the event. Without that last piece a carrier can decline to pay and leave the question to litigation.

The firm also watches the bills as they accumulate, because on a minimum-limits policy medical expenses can quietly consume the recovery the client was supposed to receive.

How Louisiana decides whether someone is responsible

Louisiana courts decide negligence using what is called the duty-risk analysis. The firm’s own summary of it is five plain questions, and a claim generally has to answer yes to each:

• Cause in fact: did the other party’s conduct actually cause the injury?
• Duty: did they owe you a duty, generally to act as a reasonable, careful person would?
• Breach: did they fail to meet that duty?
• Scope of duty: is the harm you suffered within the risk that duty was meant to protect against?
• Damages: did you actually suffer a loss?

Injuries the firm sees most often

Neck and back injuries lead the list: strains and sprains, whiplash, soft tissue injuries, herniated and bulging discs, radiculopathy and other radiating symptoms, nerve root and spinal cord compression, spinal canal narrowing, facet hypertrophy, and fractured vertebrae.

Shoulder and knee injuries follow: impingement, dislocated shoulders, and torn rotator cuffs; knee sprains, ACL and MCL tears, and torn patellar tendons. Then broken bones, pelvic fractures, concussions, and traumatic brain injuries.

The treatment that follows is often what the claim is really about: physical therapy, chiropractic care, pain management, trigger point, epidural steroid, facet joint, and cortisone injections, medial branch blocks and radiofrequency ablation, and surgery ranging from arthroscopy and rotator cuff repair to discectomy, spinal fusion, and total knee replacement. The serious injuries page explains how the long-term cost of those injuries is proved.

What falls under personal injury here

Motor vehicle collisions are the largest part of it, covered in detail on the car accident page. But the category is wider. Premises liability, product liability, and toxic tort matters all appear on the attorneys’ practice lists, alongside wrongful death and survival actions.

What these have in common is the analysis rather than the facts: what happened, what can be proved, what insurance exists, and whether a claim can realistically produce a result worth having.

Coverage decides more than people expect

A claim is limited by the coverage available to satisfy it. A meaningful share of Louisiana drivers carry no liability insurance and many who do carry minimum limits, which makes uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage central rather than incidental in collision cases.

Your own coverage can add to the at-fault party’s policy rather than simply replacing it. Where a driver and a vehicle owner are different people, or someone was working at the time, there may be layers of coverage rather than one policy.

When your own share of fault matters

Louisiana divides fault by percentage. Under Civil Code article 2323 as amended effective January 1, 2026, someone found 51 percent or more at fault for their own injuries recovers nothing, and someone found less than that has their damages reduced by their share. For an injury before 2026, ask which rule applies.

Deadlines depend on the kind of claim

There is no single deadline for every injury. Most injury claims follow the two year rule in Louisiana Civil Code article 3493.1, but workplace, wrongful death, and maritime claims each have their own periods. The table below sets out the main ones.

How long a claim takes

Longer than most people want and usually for a good reason. Evaluating a claim before treatment is complete tends to undervalue it, because the figure moves with every new diagnosis. The usual moment to assess is when a physician records maximum medical improvement, meaning this is as good as it is going to get.

When the firm says no

Not every claim should be pursued. Where the at-fault party has no insurance and no assets, a judgment can be uncollectable, and pursuing it costs the client money to reach nothing. Saying so at the first meeting is better than discovering it two years later.

Who you will deal with

There are four attorneys and no legal assistants working files in place of a lawyer. The person who meets you is the person who reads the records and speaks to the insurance adjuster.

Erik Tadda has been licensed in Louisiana since 1991 and reads medical records himself rather than working from a summary. That is unusual at scale and entirely ordinary in a practice this size, which is the point of keeping it this size.