Louisiana Case Law Search: Find Louisiana Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Opinions in the One State Where No Single Case Binds Anyone

How do I search Louisiana case law?

Start with the statute or the Civil Code article, not with the case. That inversion is the whole difference. In a common law state you hunt for the controlling holding and read the code section afterward if at all. In Louisiana the enacted text is the law, and the decisions are evidence of how courts have read it. A Louisiana search that surfaces five cases and no article number has skipped the authoritative source and gone straight to the persuasive one.

Then look for the line rather than the case. Because a single decision is not binding, one good opinion on your facts is a much weaker finding in Louisiana than it would be in Texas or Mississippi. What you want is a run of decisions applying the same reasoning to the same rule, ideally across more than one circuit and over more than a few years. That is what jurisprudence constante means in practice, and it is why Louisiana research rewards volume of citing references more than most states do.

Describe the issue as a full question with the parties, the posture, and the code article in it. Then check the form of every result before you rely on it, because Louisiana appellate courts issue three different kinds of decision and only one of them contains reasoning you can build an argument on.

Are Louisiana Court of Appeal decisions binding?

Not in the way the word is used in the other 49 states. A published Louisiana Court of Appeal opinion is persuasive authority. It is not a command to the district courts in its circuit, and it does not bind the other four circuits or later panels of the same circuit. Splits among the circuits are ordinary, and the Louisiana Supreme Court resolves them by granting a writ when it chooses to.

Louisiana does add a structural safeguard that no other state has, and it is worth knowing because it changes what an appellate reversal costs. Article V, section 8(B) of the Louisiana Constitution says that a majority of the judges sitting in a case must concur to render judgment, and then adds a rule for civil cases only: when a judgment of a district court is to be modified or reversed and one judge dissents, the case shall be reargued before a panel of at least five judges before judgment is rendered, and a majority of that larger panel must concur. So a two to one civil reversal cannot stand. It has to be reargued to five.

One more thing separates Louisiana appellate review from federal practice and from most states. Article V, section 10(B) gives the Courts of Appeal appellate jurisdiction over both law and facts in civil cases, and section 5(C) gives the Supreme Court the same reach. Louisiana appellate courts review civil facts under the manifest error standard rather than treating them as settled below. That is why so many Louisiana civil opinions spend pages on the record, and why a factual finding is a live issue on appeal in a way it usually is not elsewhere.

Can you cite an unpublished Louisiana opinion?

Louisiana handles publication in an unusual way, and the rule is more permissive than most states. Under the Uniform Rules, Courts of Appeal, an appellate decision takes one of three forms: a full opinion, a concise memorandum opinion, or a summary disposition. Rule 2-16.1.A lists six criteria for a formal opinion, including that the decision establishes a new rule of law or alters an existing one, involves a legal issue of continuing public interest, criticizes or explains existing law, applies an established rule to significantly different facts, or resolves an apparent conflict of authority. If the panel unanimously agrees the case meets none of them, it may issue a concise memorandum opinion instead.

Then comes the part that runs opposite to most states. Rule 2-16.3.A says a formal opinion of a Court of Appeal shall be designated for publication unless a majority of the panel determines otherwise. Publication is the default for formal opinions, and it takes a majority vote to withhold it. Rule 2-16.3.B flips that for the lesser forms: a memorandum opinion or a summary disposition is not designated for publication except by majority vote of the panel.

Rule 2-16.3.C then gives you a lever almost nobody uses. The panel shall reconsider its decision not to publish an opinion on the written request of a party, and also on the request of the trial judge, provided the request and the reasons are filed within the delays for rehearing. The trial judge asking an appellate court to publish is a route that simply does not exist in most states, and it is worth remembering when an unpublished decision resolves a recurring question in your parish.

On citation itself, be careful and check locally. Rule 2-16.3 is captioned Publication and Citation, but its text addresses only publication and sets out no restriction on citing an unpublished decision, unlike the express prohibitions several other states write into their rules. Individual circuits maintain their own local rules, so confirm the practice in the circuit you are filing in before you rely on an unpublished decision in a brief.

Where can I find Louisiana case law online?

The official decisions are free. The Louisiana Supreme Court posts its opinions and writ actions as they issue, and each of the five Courts of Appeal publishes its own opinions and its local rules. Google Scholar and CourtListener carry the same decisions with better full-text search. What the free sources will not do is tell you whether the decision you found sits inside a consistent line or stands alone against four circuits, and in Louisiana that is the question that decides how much your case is worth to you.

That gap is why a citator matters more here than the marketing usually suggests. In a stare decisis state, the citator answers a yes or no question: is this case still good law. In Louisiana it answers a counting question: how many courts have followed this reasoning, how recently, and in which circuits. Reading the citing references is not optional research in Louisiana, it is how you find out whether you have jurisprudence constante or a single opinion.

Westlaw and Lexis carry headnotes plus KeyCite and Shepard's, which earn their keep on complex appellate work. For the everyday job of finding the code article, reading the line of decisions that interpret it, and confirming none of them has been overturned, a self-serve tool covers the work at a fraction of an enterprise seat. We compare the whole category in the legal research software guide, and if you are leaving an incumbent, the guide to switching legal research providers walks through contract notice windows and exporting saved research.