Louisiana has a very simple one-year statute of limitations for many laws, including product liability.
That may seem a bit short, but experts emphasize that the clock starts ticking from the day you knew or reasonably should have known about the product’s defect and the harm it caused you. If you are, say, exposed to a chemical and discover the exposure and the harm it caused you only years later, the one-year limitation starts when you discovered the problem, not when you were unknowingly exposed to the chemical.
Many laws have 1-year limit
Nearly all civil actions in Louisiana have a one-year statute of limitations. Some of those laws include:
- Injury to person
- Injury to personal property
- Libel/slander
- Fraud
- Malpractice
- Trespass
There are a handful of states that join Louisiana in a one-year statute of limitations, although most have two- or three-year limits.
Product liability laws
Product liability means that a manufacturer sold a product that performed in a dangerous way not expected by the consumer or had a dangerous defect. Since there are no federal product liability laws, each state sets out laws of their own.
Louisiana limits damages in some cases. If you are partially to blame for an accident, you can recover damages for only that portion for which you are not responsible. However, even though some states limit what you can recover if you suffer a loss, in Louisiana you can sue to recover damages even if the only damages were to the product itself.
There are several ways a product can be deemed defective:
The design of the product was defective or unsafe;
The manufacture of the product was faulty;
The manufacturer didn’t adequately warn consumers about the dangers of using the product. Some products, like knives and gunpowder, are dangerous by their very nature so the manufacturers and suppliers must give proper warnings about the risks of the products;
The product didn’t conform to the warranty and the warranty was untrue.