Louisiana Wrongful Death Settlement Calculator
La. Civ. Code art. 2315.2 — prescription (Louisiana's term for the filing deadline) runs one year from death or two years from injury, whichever is longer. Medical malpractice: one year from death only. Strict, exclusive priority classes decide who may sue. No statutory cap on contingency fees outside workers' comp.
How long do you have to file a Louisiana wrongful death claim? Under La. Civ. Code art. 2315.2(B), the action prescribes one year from the date of death or two years from the date the injury was sustained, whichever is longer. If death follows the injury quickly, the effective window runs close to two years from the injury; if death comes more than a year after the injury, the one-year-from-death rule controls instead. Medical malpractice defendants get a separate, shorter rule: one year from the date of death only, with no 'whichever is longer' option.
⚖ La. Civ. Code art. 2315.2: prescription is 1 year from death OR 2 years from injury, whichever is longer. Louisiana's former general 1-year statute, art. 3492, was repealed July 1, 2024 — do not rely on it.
Your Injury
Your Estimated Settlement
$36,000 — $66,000
Pain and suffering = $15,000 in medical bills × 3.0 severity multiplier. Your bills are already included in that figure, so they are not added again.
What you'd actually take home
- Estimated settlement
- $51,000
- Attorney fee (33–40%)
- −$17,000 to −$20,400
- Roughly yours
- $30,600 – $34,000
Not included: case costs (court filing, expert witnesses, medical records) and any medical liens or health-insurance reimbursement. Those come out of your share too, so treat the figure above as an upper bound.
Keep this estimate — it is gone when you close the tab.
Editorially Reviewed — Content reviewed for accuracy using published legal research, government data, and verified court records. See our methodology
Reviewed by Leonard Goldberg, Editor · Last updated
Louisiana Wrongful Death — Prescription and Who May Sue
Louisiana is a civil-law jurisdiction, and it uses its own term for a filing deadline: prescription, not "statute of limitations." Under La. Civ. Code art. 2315.2, a wrongful death action is a direct action brought by the beneficiaries themselves for the damages they personally sustained as a result of the death — not solely a claim pursued through an estate representative. Louisiana law lists exactly who may bring that action, and it does so in a strict order of priority.
The prescriptive period itself has two prongs. Art. 2315.2(B) states: "The right of action granted by this Article prescribes one year from the death of the deceased or two years from the day that injury or damage is sustained, whichever is longer." Medical malpractice cases are carved out separately under art. 2315.2(F): those claims prescribe one year from the date of death only, without the benefit of the longer two-year-from-injury alternative. Important: Louisiana's former general one-year prescription statute for delictual (tort) actions, Civ. Code art. 3492, was repealed effective July 1, 2024 (Acts 2024, No. 423). Art. 2315.2 now states its own self-contained prescriptive period, as rewritten by Acts 2025, No. 488 — older sources that still cite art. 3492 for wrongful death timing are describing law that no longer applies.
Who may sue is equally structured. Art. 2315.2(A) sets out four tiered, exclusive classes, and only one class may sue at a time — a lower-priority class may bring the action only if no member of every higher class survived the decedent: (1) the surviving spouse and/or child or children; (2) the surviving father and mother, if no spouse or child survived; (3) surviving brothers and sisters, if no spouse, child, or parent survived; (4) surviving grandparents, if no spouse, child, parent, or sibling survived. Under art. 2315.2(E), a parent who abandoned the deceased during minority — defined as failing, without just cause, to provide care or support for at least 12 months — is treated as not having survived and is excluded from this priority scheme. On attorney's fees, Louisiana imposes no statutory cap on contingency fees in an ordinary wrongful death case; fees are governed only by the reasonableness standard of Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5. A 20% contingency cap does exist, but only for workers' compensation claims and only with approval of the workers' compensation judge under La. R.S. 23:1141 — it has no bearing on an ordinary wrongful death or accident case.
Louisiana Wrongful Death FAQs
What does "prescription" mean in a Louisiana wrongful death case?
Louisiana is a civil-law state and uses "prescription" where most states say "statute of limitations." It refers to the same idea — a legal deadline for filing suit — but it is governed by Louisiana's own Civil Code, not by a separate limitations statute.
How long do I have to file a Louisiana wrongful death claim?
Under La. Civ. Code art. 2315.2(B), the action prescribes one year from the date of death or two years from the date the injury was sustained, whichever is longer. Which prong controls depends on how much time passed between the injury and the death.
Does the deadline work differently for a medical malpractice death?
Yes. Under art. 2315.2(F), medical malpractice defendants get only the one-year-from-death rule, without the 'whichever is longer' alternative available in other wrongful death cases.
Who is allowed to bring a Louisiana wrongful death claim?
Art. 2315.2(A) sets out four exclusive, tiered classes, and only one class may sue: (1) surviving spouse and/or children; (2) surviving parents, if no spouse or child survived; (3) surviving siblings, if no spouse, child, or parent survived; (4) surviving grandparents, if no spouse, child, parent, or sibling survived.
Can more than one priority class sue at the same time?
No. The classes are exclusive and sequential. A class may bring the action only if no member of every class ranked above it survived the decedent.
What happens if a parent had abandoned the deceased?
Under art. 2315.2(E), a parent who abandoned the deceased during minority — failing, without just cause, to provide care or support for at least 12 months — is deemed not to have survived and is excluded from the priority scheme entirely.
Is there a cap on the attorney's contingency fee in a Louisiana wrongful death case?
No statutory cap applies to an ordinary wrongful death or accident case. Fees are governed by the reasonableness standard under Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5. A 20% cap does exist under La. R.S. 23:1141, but it applies only to workers' compensation claims and requires approval of the workers' compensation judge.
What happened to the old one-year deadline under Civil Code art. 3492?
Art. 3492, Louisiana's former general one-year prescription statute for tort claims, was repealed effective July 1, 2024 (Acts 2024, No. 423). Wrongful death prescription is now governed entirely by art. 2315.2, as rewritten by Acts 2025, No. 488 — art. 3492 should no longer be cited for wrongful death timing.
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Other Calculators for Louisiana
Each Louisiana calculator reflects state-specific laws (caps, statutes of limitations, comparative-negligence rules) and uses Louisiana verdict data where available.