Licensed in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas
Licensed in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas
The wound closes and the fear does not. That is one pattern Louisiana law has language for, rather than leaving it to sympathy.
Two separate routes exist. One belongs to the person who was attacked. The other belongs to a defined group of relatives who saw it happen, and that second route is narrower than people assume.
At Lukov Injury Law, we treat the psychological record as part of the file rather than as something raised at the end.
The sections below set out what the Civil Code says about the owner’s responsibility, who may claim for emotional harm, and the limits written into each rule. Contact us today to talk through what happened.
Dogs sit in their own paragraph of the Civil Code, and the standard there is stricter than the one applied to animals under the preceding paragraph.
Under La. C.C. art. 2321(A), the owner of an animal is answerable for the damage it causes, but “only upon a showing that the owner knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known that his animal’s behavior would cause damage, that the damage could have been prevented by the exercise of reasonable care, and that the owner failed to exercise such reasonable care.”
Paragraph B then separates dogs out. It provides that “the owner of a dog is strictly liable for damages for injuries to persons or property caused by the dog and which the owner could have prevented and which did not result from the injured person’s provocation of the dog.”
Two limits are built into that same sentence, and both matter to an emotional harm claim:
The article was amended by Acts 2025, No. 488, so it is worth reading in its current form rather than relying on an older summary.
It does, through the general damages article rather than through a special one.
La. C.C. art. 2315(A) states the foundation: “Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it.” Paragraph B then addresses what damages may include, providing that they “may include loss of consortium, service, and society,” recoverable by the same categories of persons who would have had a cause of action for the wrongful death of an injured person.
The same paragraph carries a limit worth knowing about. It provides that 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.”
That last phrase does real work in a psychological claim. Future care is tied to a manifest injury or disease, which is a documentation question rather than an argument. What is recorded, diagnosed and treated is what the provision speaks to.
Sometimes, and Louisiana answers this with a single article that both opens the door and closes it.
La. C.C. art. 2315.6 governs claims for mental anguish caused by an injury to someone else. It applies to persons “who view an event causing injury to another person, or who come upon the scene of the event soon thereafter.”
The article lists the categories, and the list is exhaustive:
A parent who watched a child be attacked is inside that class. A neighbor, a friend, or a caregiver who witnessed the same event is not, however distressing the experience was.
Paragraph B is explicit about how high the bar sits. To recover, “the injured person must suffer such harm that one can reasonably expect a person in the claimant’s position to suffer serious mental anguish or emotional distress from the experience,” and the claimant’s own distress “must be severe, debilitating, and foreseeable.”
The article then closes the subject with a sentence that leaves no alternative route: damages for mental anguish or emotional distress for injury to another “shall be recovered only in accordance with this Article.”
Read together, the message is that Louisiana recognizes the bystander claim, defines exactly who holds it, and sets a demanding standard for proving it.
The two routes are separate claims rather than two descriptions of one. The injured person’s own distress forms part of their damages under art. 2315. A qualifying relative’s distress is their own claim under art. 2315.6, with its own threshold to meet. A family can hold both at the same time, and the records that support each one are not the same records.
Through La. C.C. art. 2323, and the rule changed recently enough that older material describes it incorrectly.
The article requires that the percentage of fault attributable to every person who caused or contributed to the injury be determined, whether or not that person is a party to the action. It then sets the consequence:
That structure came in with Acts 2025, No. 15, effective January 1, 2026. Material written before that date may describe Louisiana as a pure comparative fault state, which no longer reflects the article as amended.
The link back to the dog rule is direct. Provocation already sits inside art. 2321(B) as a limit on strict liability, and conduct short of provocation can still be weighed as comparative fault under art. 2323. Both routes make what the injured person was doing a live question.
The same kind that supports a physical one, built the same way, from the beginning. In a dog bite claim the psychological file is opened at the first appointment rather than added later.
The point of the record is not volume. It is the sequence. Art. 2315(B) ties future care to a manifest injury, and a manifest injury is one that appears in documents created as it developed.
There is a practical reason this matters more here than in a physical injury claim. A fracture is visible on an image taken once. A psychological injury is established by a pattern across time, which means a gap in the record is not neutral: it reads as a period in which nothing was happening. Continuity of treatment, even at long intervals, carries the account in a way that a single assessment written months afterward cannot.
Where an attack caused a head injury as well, that assessment runs separately, and our page on traumatic brain injury sets out how it is documented.
Two years, under the article that replaced the old one-year rule.
La. C.C. art. 3493.1 provides that “delictual actions are subject to a liberative prescription of two years,” and that “this prescription commences to run from the day that injury or damage is sustained.” It was enacted by Acts 2024, No. 423, effective July 1, 2024.
The same article contains one carve-out, and it is narrow. Prescription “does not run against minors or interdicts in actions involving permanent disability and brought pursuant to the Louisiana Products Liability Act or state law governing product liability actions.” That exception is written for product liability, and a dog attack claim is not within it.
Because prescription runs from the day the injury is sustained rather than from the day a psychological condition is diagnosed, a delay in seeking treatment does not extend the period. Which period governs a particular claim depends on when the cause of action arose, so confirm the position with a lawyer.
A dog attack claim that records only the wound describes half of what happened. Louisiana gives the injured person a route through the general damages article and gives a defined group of relatives a separate one, each with its own conditions. At Lukov Injury Law, we build both into the file from the start rather than adding them at the end.
A dog bite claim carries the psychological injury alongside the physical one, and both are established the same way.
You work directly with Abby Lukov, not a case manager, and the first conversation costs nothing. Call us today to talk through the injury and the treatment so far.
Louisiana’s general damages article, La. C.C. art. 2315(A), provides that every act of man that causes damage to another obliges the person at fault to repair it. Paragraph B addresses what damages may include and ties future medical treatment, services, surveillance or procedures to a manifest physical or mental injury or disease. What can be recovered in a particular claim depends on the facts and on what is documented.
La. C.C. art. 2315.6 allows certain relatives who view an event causing injury to another person, or who come upon the scene soon thereafter, to recover for mental anguish or emotional distress. Parents are within the listed categories, alongside a spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings and grandparents. The article also sets the standard that must be met.
The article states the test. The injured person must suffer such harm that one can reasonably expect a person in the claimant’s position to suffer serious mental anguish or emotional distress, and the claimant’s distress must be severe, debilitating, and foreseeable. The article further provides that such damages shall be recovered only in accordance with it.
No. The categories in La. C.C. art. 2315.6 are limited to the spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, siblings and grandparents of the injured person. Someone outside those categories does not hold a claim under the article, and the article states that these damages are recoverable only in accordance with it.
La. C.C. art. 2321(B) provides that the owner of a dog is strictly liable for damages for injuries caused by the dog which the owner could have prevented and which did not result from the injured person’s provocation of the dog. Both of those conditions sit inside the rule, so the standard is strict but not unlimited. The article was amended by Acts 2025, No. 488.
La. C.C. art. 2323 requires the percentage of fault of every contributing person to be determined. Where the negligence attributable to the injured person is equal to or greater than fifty-one percent, that person is not entitled to recover damages. Below that figure, the recovery is reduced in proportion to that percentage. This structure took effect January 1, 2026 under Acts 2025, No. 15.
La. C.C. art. 3493.1 sets a liberative prescription of two years for delictual actions, running from the day that injury or damage is sustained. It was enacted by Acts 2024, No. 423, effective July 1, 2024. Which period governs a particular claim depends on when the cause of action arose, so the position should be confirmed with a lawyer rather than taken from a general figure.
The article ties the start of prescription to the day the injury or damage is sustained. Its one carve-out suspends prescription for minors and interdicts only in product liability actions involving permanent disability, which does not cover a dog attack claim. Because of that, waiting for a psychological condition to be diagnosed before seeking advice carries a risk.
Disclaimer: This article provides general information and should not be treated as legal advice. Laws change over time, and outcomes depend on the specific facts of each case. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this article or contacting Lukov Injury Law LLC. For advice about your situation, contact a qualified attorney. Time limits apply to legal claims, so do not delay in seeking legal help.
