Shreveport Car Accident Lawyer

Shreveport wrecks happen on I-20 in the morning push, on I-49 where the ramps drop from highway speed near Bert Kouns, at the signals along Youree Drive, and on the LA-3132 Inner Loop. The people in them are taken to Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport on Kings Highway, Willis-Knighton on Greenwood Road, or CHRISTUS Highland on Bert Kouns. The Shreveport Police Department writes the report inside the city limits, and the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office writes it out in the parish. Trey Morris Injury Lawyers is at 509 Milam Street downtown, across the street from the Caddo Parish Courthouse at 501 Texas Street, where Caddo suits are filed and tried in the First Judicial District Court. In the first week we pull the police report and the EMS records, ask the businesses near the wreck to hold their camera footage before it loops, and send a preservation letter for the other vehicle’s event data recorder.

The law that governs the claim is Louisiana law and it is the same in every parish. If your wreck happened on or after July 1, 2024, you have two years to file suit under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1. If it happened on or after January 1, 2026, a finding that you were 51% at fault under Art. 2323 ends the claim outright, and a single percentage point on either side of that line decides whether you collect anything. That is why the fault record on an I-20, I-49, or Youree Drive wreck gets built from documents early, before a polite apology at the scene is turned into an argument about your share of the blame.

Real motor vehicle accident results

Results for Louisiana Clients

All case results →

• $49 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  An impaired driver of a stolen vehicle driving the wrong way collided with our client head-on, resulting in brain injury and multiple broken bones.

• $12.1 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  A commercial vehicle failed to stop at a red light subsequently crashing into our client causing serious brain injury and permanent loss of function.

• $7 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  When the other vehicle struck our client, the result was a major hemorrhage and a stroke.

• $6.2 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  A fatigued commercial-vehicle driver fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended our client, leaving our client with severe neck and back injuries.

• $3 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  Out on the highway, the at-fault driver hit our client.

• $2.9 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident

  Our client was rear-ended by the other driver and seriously injured.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes; each case is decided on its own facts.

What to Do After a Crash

1. Check for injuries and call 911. Get yourself and your passengers looked at first. The officer who works the scene writes down the location, the road conditions, what each driver said, and any citations, while all of it is still fresh. That report carries weight later when the other side tells a different story.
2. Move to a safe location if you can. Louisiana law tells you to clear the travel lanes when it is possible to do so. Pull onto the shoulder or into the nearest parking lot and turn on your hazards. Sitting still in a live lane on I-20, I-49, or Youree Drive is how a second wreck happens.
3. Exchange insurance and contact information. Write down the other driver’s name, phone, carrier, and policy number, plus the plate, make, model, and color. If a commercial truck is involved, copy the name painted on the door or the trailer.
4. Document the scene with photos and video. Shoot the damage from several angles, the skid marks, the signals, the debris, and any injury you can see. Take wide frames that show the whole intersection. Video is better than stills. An adjuster can argue with your memory three weeks later; arguing with your photographs is harder.
5. Collect witness names and phone numbers. Bystanders scatter within minutes. If somebody watched it happen, get a name and a number before they pull away. A neutral witness settles a swearing match between two drivers.
6. Seek medical attention, even without obvious symptoms. Some injuries stay quiet at first. A brain injury can take 24 to 72 hours to show itself. Internal bleeding shows nothing at all from the outside. Getting evaluated creates a dated record tying what is wrong with you to the crash. See our guide on delayed-onset injuries.
7. Report the accident to your own insurance company. Your policy obligates you to tell them. Give the date, the time, the location, and the other driver’s information. Do not guess at fault, and do not walk them through your injuries.
8. Keep all medical records and receipts. Save the emergency room bill, the imaging reports, the prescriptions, the therapy invoices, the mileage log. Those pages are what economic damages are built from: medical bills, lost wages, and out-of-pocket costs you can prove on paper.
9. Contact an attorney before signing anything. The other driver’s adjuster will call within a few days and will sound perfectly pleasant. Their job is still to close your file cheaply. Talk to a lawyer before you sign a release, cash a check, or agree to a recorded statement. See how insurance companies handle claims.

This week, start one folder and put the photos, the other driver’s information, the report number, and every receipt in it. There are real reasons people delay seeking legal advice after an accident, and nearly all of them end up costing the person who waited.

Why Shreveport hires us

Local Office. Statewide Record.

• Across the street

  From the 1st JDC

  Our 509 Milam St office sits across the street from the First Judicial District Court, where Shreveport injury suits are filed and tried.

• 11

  Trial attorneys, one team

  Your case is handled by the firm's own trial attorneys, and we respond in minutes, 24/7.

• 24/7

  We come to you

  Hospital, home, or the office at 509 Milam St. Free case review, and no fee unless we win.

• 122

  Cases resolved over $1 million

  Verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more, won by the same trial team that handles Shreveport cases.

Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Claim

Careful people make these errors all the time. They are not a sign of bad judgment. They come from nobody ever explaining how an insurance file and Louisiana tort law actually operate.

1. Admitting fault at the scene. Saying you are sorry, or that you never saw them, is the human reflex. It can also be treated as an admission and read back to you later. Louisiana divides fault by percentage under La. C.C. Art. 2323. For wrecks on or after January 1, 2026, hitting 51% means you collect nothing. That apology at the curb is exactly the material an adjuster uses to push your number upward.
2. Giving a recorded statement without legal counsel. The adjuster is paid to protect their company’s money. A recorded statement pins you to one version of events. When your memory sharpens or your symptoms get worse, that early recording is used to question your credibility. You are not required by law to give one to the other driver’s insurer.
3. Posting about the accident on social media. Defense teams read Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. One photo of you standing at a family cookout becomes an argument that your back is fine. One comment about the wreck gets clipped out of context. Post nothing about the crash, your treatment, or how you feel until the claim is closed.
4. Delaying medical treatment or skipping follow-ups. Wait two weeks to see a doctor and the insurer will say something else caused your injury. A gap in the middle of treatment does the same damage. Keep the appointments. Louisiana’s prescriptive period is now two years under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, and missing it ends the claim no matter how clear the fault was.
5. Accepting the first settlement offer without legal review. Early offers are priced to close the file cheap. They land before anyone knows what your treatment will cost. Sign the release and there is no going back for the surgery you needed six months later. A review tells you whether the offer accounts for future medical costs and lost earning capacity.

The same rules cover every motor vehicle wreck, not only cars. If you were on a bicycle when a driver hit you, our Shreveport bicycle accident page covers what changes for cyclists. Before you take any adjuster call this week, write down the date you first saw a doctor and keep it in front of you.

Accidents We Handle

Shreveport wrecks do not come in one shape. They happen on I-20 in the morning push, at Youree Drive and East 70th Street, and in the parking lots off Airline Drive. What kind of collision you were in decides how fault gets investigated, which evidence matters, and how the carrier prices the file.

• 

  Rear-End Collisions Common on I-49 and Shreveport’s corridors. The trailing driver isn’t always at fault. Insurers argue you stopped short to inflate your fault percentage.

  These stack up on the tight stretches of I-49 and along the commercial corridors. Most people assume the driver in back always carries it. Usually true, not always. Louisiana hands every party a percentage, so the carrier will say you stopped short without warning or that a brake light was out, and every point they move onto you comes off the check.

• 

  Intersection Accidents T-bone and broadside collisions at high-volume Shreveport intersections. Right-of-way disputes require camera records, signal timing data, and witness statements.

  Broadside and T-bone wrecks pile up at the busy lights in town, and they almost always turn into a fight over who had the green. Signal timing records, camera footage, and a neutral witness are what settle it. Pull three or four cars into the wreck and you are dealing with several carriers and several competing fault theories at once.

• 

  Hit-and-Run Accidents When the other driver flees, your uninsured motorist coverage becomes the primary source of compensation. Your own insurer frequently takes an adversarial position.

  When the driver who hit you keeps going, your own uninsured motorist coverage is where the money comes from. Louisiana requires insurers to offer UM, and plenty of people carry it without knowing. Your UM carrier then stands in the shoes of the driver who left, which means the company you have paid for years starts treating you like the other side. A UM claim works even when nobody ever identifies the car.

• 

  Single-Vehicle Accidents Road defects and debris cause crashes across Caddo Parish. Claims against government entities carry a service-of-citation rule under La. R.S. 13:5107(D).

  Not every wreck involves a second driver. Broken pavement, debris in the lane, and a shoulder that drops off cause single-vehicle crashes all over Caddo Parish, and those claims often run against whichever body maintains the road. The general two-year prescriptive period applies with no pre-suit notice required. Once suit is filed, service of citation on the state or political subdivision has to be requested within 90 days of filing under La. R.S. 13:5107(D), or that defendant can be dismissed without prejudice. Confirm the exact dates with an attorney right away.

• 

  Rideshare & Commercial Vehicles Uber, Lyft, and commercial fleet crashes add insurance complexity. Rideshare policies tier by driver status. Commercial policies come with more aggressive defense teams.

  An Uber, a Lyft, or a company truck adds a layer of insurance. Rideshare coverage is tiered by what the driver was doing at that moment: app off, app on and waiting, en route to a pickup, or carrying a passenger. Each tier carries its own limits. Commercial policies usually run higher, and they come with defense counsel and adjusters who handle these files every day.

• 

  Motorcycle Accidents Riders face no structural protection in a collision. Injuries are typically more severe, and insurers routinely apply bias against motorcyclists. Fault arguments are more aggressive.

  A rider has nothing around them when the impact comes. Road rash, fractures, brain injuries, and spinal damage are the ordinary result. Adjusters carry a bias against riders and use it to push the fault percentage up under Louisiana’s comparative fault rule. Helmet use gets argued over damages. Those arguments are predictable, and they are answered with crash reconstruction and medical proof. See our Shreveport motorcycle accident page.

• 

  Bicycle Accidents Cyclists have no protection from a vehicle impact. Youree Drive, Line Avenue, and I-49 service roads are common collision points. Fault disputes often center on lane position and signal compliance.

  A cyclist takes the whole impact. Brain injuries, spinal cord damage, and multiple fractures are common. Youree Drive, Line Avenue, and Bert Kouns Industrial Loop put bicycles and heavy traffic in the same narrow space. The fault argument usually lands on where the rider was in the lane, whether they signaled, and whether the driver checked a mirror before turning. See our Shreveport bicycle accident page.

• 

  Pedestrian Accidents Pedestrians struck by vehicles sustain some of the most severe injuries in personal injury law. Crosswalk compliance, vehicle speed, and sight lines are central to fault disputes.

  A person on foot has no protection at all, so brain injuries, spinal cord damage, multiple fractures, and internal injuries are the pattern. The defense fights over crosswalk use, jaywalking, how fast the car was going, and what the driver could see. Any fault put on the pedestrian cuts what they collect, and starting January 1, 2026, reaching 51% ends the claim. See our Shreveport pedestrian accident page.

• 

  Bus Accidents Crashes involving public transit or charter buses often implicate government entities and their distinct procedural rules. Multiple passengers mean multiple claims against the same policy.

  A public transit bus puts you against a government defendant. The general two-year prescriptive period applies and no pre-suit notice is required, but after suit is filed, service of citation on that defendant has to be requested within 90 days under La. R.S. 13:5107(D). Charter and private carriers bring commercial carrier liability, the FMCSA rules, and tiered policies. When a dozen passengers are hurt, all of those claims compete for the same limits, which is why the timing of your filing matters. See our Shreveport bus accident page.

If you are not sure which category yours falls in, give us the date and the location this week and we will tell you what evidence needs preserving first.

What we handle

Shreveport Practice Areas

• Car AccidentsRear-end, intersection, and highway collisions across Louisiana.
• Truck Accidents18-wheeler and commercial-vehicle wrecks governed by federal trucking rules.
• Catastrophic InjuryBrain, spinal-cord, amputation, and severe-burn injuries that change a life.
• Wrongful DeathClaims brought by families after a fatal accident or act of negligence.
• Premises LiabilitySlip-and-fall and unsafe-property injuries on someone else's premises.
• Product LiabilityInjuries caused by defective or unreasonably dangerous products.
• Oilfield AccidentsDrilling, pipeline, and refinery injuries across the energy sector.
• Industrial AccidentsPlant, warehouse, and heavy-equipment injuries in industrial settings.
• Offshore AccidentsRig, platform, and vessel injuries beyond the shoreline.

Common Car Accident Injuries

Car wreck injuries run from a strain that clears up in a few weeks to damage that changes what you can do for a living. How badly you were hurt is the single largest factor in what the claim is worth. That is not a legal opinion, it is the arithmetic every adjuster and every jury works from.

Some of it is obvious at the scene. A broken femur or a deep laceration gets the paramedics’ attention immediately. The rest keeps quiet. Brain injuries, internal bleeding, and herniated discs can take days or weeks to announce themselves.

That gap between the wreck and the first symptom is where claims get hurt. With no medical record tying the symptom back to the crash, the carrier says it came from somewhere else. It is one of the main ways people who wait to get advice end up collecting less than they should.

Fuel ignition, an electrical fire, or a chemical release can leave burn injuries that mean skin grafts, weeks in the hospital, and long rehabilitation. Burns carry their own damages profile because the scarring and disfigurement are permanent, and these files often overlap with catastrophic injury claims.

The prescriptive period for most car accident claims is two years from the date of the wreck under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, effective July 1, 2024. A prescriptive period is what Louisiana calls a filing deadline: the window you have to bring suit before the court closes the door permanently. Two years reads like plenty. Building a serious injury case takes medical records, expert evaluations, and evidence that has to be locked down long before then.

Louisiana also splits fault by percentage under La. C.C. Art. 2323, meaning the judge or jury assigns each party a share of the blame. For wrecks before January 1, 2026, Louisiana uses pure comparative fault: your damages drop by your percentage, but you still collect something no matter how high it goes. On or after that date, 51% ends it. How well your injuries are documented feeds straight into that fault number, because a carrier who cannot argue with your MRI will argue about your driving instead.

The difference between a serious injury and a standard personal injury claim drives the strategy, the experts you need, and the future medical care projections that carry the back half of the number.

• 

  Whiplash & Neck Injuries Symptoms often take 24 to 72 hours to appear. Standard X-rays do not show soft tissue damage, giving adjusters room to minimize. An MRI and consistent follow-up visits build the paper trail your case requires.

  Whiplash is what happens when your head snaps forward and back on impact and the soft tissue in your neck stretches and tears. Symptoms usually take 24 to 72 hours. You can walk away feeling fine and wake up unable to turn your head. That delay is normal, and adjusters use it. A standard X-ray shows nothing, which gives them room to call the injury minor. An MRI, a detailed clinical exam, and follow-up visits you actually attend build the record the claim runs on.

• 

  Traumatic Brain Injuries TBIs range from concussion to permanent cognitive impairment. Delayed symptoms are common. Neuropsychological testing produces measurable data insurers can’t dismiss as subjective.

  A brain injury can come from your head striking the wheel or from the force of the collision moving your brain inside your skull with no impact at all. They run from a concussion to permanent cognitive damage. The delayed symptoms, confusion, memory trouble, sensitivity to light, are common and routinely missed in an emergency room triage. Neuropsychological testing turns the injury into standardized numbers, which is what translates it into damages.

• 

  Spinal Cord Injuries Complete or incomplete injury determines paralysis type. Lifetime care costs are among the highest in personal injury law. Requires specific expertise in calculating future medical costs and lost earning capacity.

  Spinal cord injuries come from compression, severing, or swelling after the impact. A complete injury leaves no function below the damage point. An incomplete one leaves some movement or sensation. Lifetime care means home modifications, an accessible vehicle, attendant care, and years of therapy, and that plus lost earning capacity puts these among the highest-value files in the practice. They need experts who can price future medical costs in a way a Caddo Parish jury believes.

• 

  Broken Bones & Fractures Surgical fractures require plates, screws, or rods and months of healing. Nonunion means additional surgery. Economic impact varies sharply by occupation, and a broken femur sidelines a laborer for months.

  Wrecks break ribs, wrists, femurs, pelvises, and facial bones. A surgical fracture means plates, screws, or rods, and healing measured in months rather than weeks. Nonunion, where the bone does not knit, means another surgery and a much larger medical bill. What it costs you depends on the work you do: a desk job with a broken wrist is out for weeks, and a man on a plant floor with a broken femur is out for months.

• 

  Internal Injuries No external symptoms at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain while bleeding develops beneath the surface. A ruptured spleen or lacerated liver is life-threatening within hours.

  Organ damage and internal bleeding show nothing on the outside at the scene. Adrenaline covers the pain while the bleeding builds underneath. A ruptured spleen or a lacerated liver can kill within hours, and by the time it is obvious the situation is critical. This is the strongest reason to get a full evaluation after any wreck, even when you feel more or less normal. Gaps in treatment turn into the carrier’s argument that the crash did not cause any of it.

• 

  Soft Tissue & Herniated Discs No fracture on the X-ray does not mean a minor injury. Herniated discs press on nerves and cause radiating pain that can require surgery. Louisiana law allows compensation for aggravation of a prior condition.

  Soft tissue injuries are torn ligaments, strained muscles, and damaged tendons with no broken bone anywhere. A herniated disc happens when the outer layer of the disc tears and the inner material presses on the nerve, sending pain, numbness, and weakness down an arm or a leg. Carriers argue that no fracture means no real injury. Louisiana does not bar a claim for aggravation of a pre-existing condition, but it takes medical records that show clearly what you were like before and after.

Documenting the injury is half of it. You still have to prove the other party caused it. Ask your doctor’s office this week for a complete copy of your chart, not the visit summary.

Proving Fault After a Crash

Winning a car accident claim in Louisiana takes more than your side of the story. You need evidence that another party was negligent, and negligence has four required elements. Miss one and the case is over.

The four are duty, breach, causation, and damages. Duty means the other driver had a legal obligation to drive safely. Everyone behind a wheel in Shreveport owes that to everyone else, on Youree Drive and on I-20 alike. Breach means they failed it. Running a red light is a breach. So is texting, speeding, or driving like the road belongs to them.

Causation ties the breach to your particular injuries, and it takes proof that what they did is what hurt you. Damages means real, documented loss: the medical bills, the missed paychecks, the pain. No provable loss, no claim to bring.

Comparative fault raises what is at stake in all four. Under La. C.C. Art. 2323, as amended by Act No. 15 of 2025, a plaintiff assigned 51% or more of the fault collects nothing, and that rule takes effect January 1, 2026. Before the change, Louisiana ran pure comparative fault and you could still collect at 99% fault. Now the carrier has a reason to push every scrap of blame onto you, because at 51% their exposure goes to zero.

There is a second change that lands right here. In May 2025, Act No. 459 eliminated the Housley presumption in civil tort cases. Housley was a shortcut: healthy before the wreck, symptomatic after, and the court presumed the wreck did it. That presumption is gone. Establishing the connection now takes expert medical testimony, which makes causation harder and your treating physicians and experts more important than they were a year ago. If you had prior injuries, expect the adjuster to say your symptoms are all pre-existing. Your lawyer needs an answer ready before that letter arrives.

What a Strong Fault Investigation Looks Like

A real investigation starts with the police report, the witness statements, and whatever physical evidence is left at the scene. Traffic camera and dashcam footage has to be secured before it is overwritten. Independent witnesses get located early, because their accounts carry weight with both adjusters and juries. The sequence of the crash gets reconstructed, every party who might be liable gets identified, and where evidence is at risk, a spoliation letter goes out to lock it down.

Evidence has a shelf life. Surveillance systems at Shreveport businesses recycle their footage on cycles as short as 48 hours. Cars get repaired or hauled to salvage. Memories blur inside a few weeks. An investigation that starts within days of the wreck saves the proof the claim depends on, and waiting months to call a lawyer loses evidence nobody can recreate.

Here is what we do. We pull the police report and the EMS records, which fix the officer’s first observations, the road conditions, and any citations. We go after traffic camera footage from the signal intersections and surveillance video from the businesses nearby before those systems loop. We find the eyewitnesses and interview them while it is still fresh.

When liability is contested, accident reconstruction experts use the physical evidence, the damage patterns, and the skid marks to rebuild the collision. Biomechanical engineers then connect the forces in that collision to the specific injuries you sustained, which is exactly what the post-Housley causation standard now requires.

Every modern car carries an Event Data Recorder, the black box. It records speed, braking, steering input, and belt status in the seconds before impact, and that data is hard for the other side to talk around. Cell phone records get subpoenaed when distraction is suspected, because a text timestamped seconds before the crash is about as clean a breach as evidence gets. The at-fault driver’s history matters too: prior tickets, a suspended license, earlier wrecks. Each piece answers one specific defense. The prescriptive period for most car accident claims in Louisiana is two years under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, as amended by Act No. 423 of 2024, but the deadline for saving evidence runs out far sooner. If your wreck was near a business with cameras, call them this week and ask them to hold the footage.

Identifying All Liable Parties

The other driver is not always the only one who owes you. Liability just means legal responsibility for causing harm, and Louisiana lets you bring a claim against every party whose negligence contributed. Finding all of them changes two things: how much insurance is actually available, and how the fault percentages get divided up.

If the driver who hit you was working at the time, their employer answers for it under respondeat superior (La. C.C. Art. 2320). The Latin means let the master answer, and it holds employers responsible for what an employee does within the scope of the job. Delivery drivers, sales reps, and commercial operators all fall inside it, and employer liability usually opens a much larger commercial policy. Our causes of truck accidents page covers commercial vehicle claims in detail.

Manufacturers and parts suppliers come into it when a mechanical failure caused or worsened the wreck. Brakes, tires, or an airbag that fails on impact creates a product liability claim separate from the negligence claim against the driver. Watch the calendar on those: Louisiana’s prescriptive period for products liability is still one year, not two.

The agency responsible for the road can share fault as well. Bad maintenance, missing signage, and a dangerous intersection design all support a claim against a state or local body. Our poor road conditions page walks through those. The general two-year prescriptive period applies and there is no pre-suit notice requirement, but once suit is filed, service of citation on the state or political subdivision must be requested within 90 days under La. R.S. 13:5107(D) or that defendant can be dismissed, which is why naming them early matters.

Louisiana recognizes a limited form of dram shop liability. A bar or restaurant that served a visibly intoxicated person who then caused a wreck answers for its share.

Rideshare adds one more layer. Uber and Lyft carry tiered policies keyed to whether the app was on, whether the driver was headed to a pickup, or whether a passenger was in the car, and each tier has different limits. Assumption of risk can come up too, when a passenger knowingly got in with an impaired driver.

Knowing who is responsible is only half the picture. Louisiana’s own rules, several of which changed in the last two years, decide what those fault findings are actually worth.

Louisiana Laws That Affect Your Claim

Louisiana is the only state whose legal system grew out of French and Spanish civil law instead of English common law. That is not trivia. It means the rules running your car accident claim look different from the ones in Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi. The vocabulary is different, the deadlines are different, and a strategy that works an hour west on I-20 can fail here.

When a dangerous road condition contributed to your wreck, the body responsible for maintaining that road shares the liability if the defect caused the crash. Those claims come with their own procedure under the Louisiana Governmental Claims Act, La. R.S. 13:5101. The general two-year prescriptive period applies and no pre-suit notice is required, but after suit is filed, service of citation on the government defendant must be requested within 90 days of filing under La. R.S. 13:5107(D), or the claim against that defendant can be dismissed without prejudice.

If your case is filed in Caddo Parish, it goes to the First Judicial District Court at 501 Texas Street, which is the building across the street from our office. That court has 15 judges, three of them in the civil division. How these rules stack on each other is what your claim is finally worth; the factors behind average personal injury settlements in Louisiana show how state law drives the number.

Comparative Fault

Comparative fault is how a Louisiana court divides responsibility among everybody involved. Instead of one person carrying all of it, each party gets a percentage, and what you collect drops by whatever share lands on you.

Concretely: total damages of $200,000 with 25% fault on you comes to $150,000. Move that to 40% fault and it comes to $120,000. The arithmetic is simple. The percentages are where cases are won and lost.

Under the current version of La. C.C. Art. 2323, Louisiana runs pure comparative fault, so you can still collect at 99% fault. You would take home 1% of your damages, but the claim survives.

That is about to change. Act No. 15 of 2025 amends Art. 2323 to impose a 51% bar effective January 1, 2026. For any wreck on or after that date, a plaintiff assigned 51% or more of the fault takes nothing. Zero. It puts Louisiana in line with states like Texas that already use modified comparative fault.

Adjusters already work to move your percentage up in every file. They will point at your speed, your lane position, your phone, or an old injury they say affected your driving. Every point they add comes off what they pay. With the 51% bar coming, that same tactic stops reducing the claim and starts erasing it. An insurer who gets you to 51% owes nothing at all.

Assumption of risk is one of the arguments they use to shift blame. A lot of people never call a lawyer because they believe part of the wreck was their doing, and that belief is one of the most common reasons people skip legal advice after a crash. It costs them money the law still allows them to collect. Write down your own account of the wreck this week, while you still remember which light you had.

The Filing Deadline

Louisiana does not say statute of limitations. It calls the filing deadline a prescriptive period, a civil code concept that extinguishes your right to bring the claim once the clock runs out. After that, the strength of your evidence stops mattering.

For car accident claims the period is two years from the date of the wreck under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, established by Act No. 423 of 2024 and effective July 1, 2024. Before that, Louisiana gave you one year under La. C.C. Art. 3492, among the shortest deadlines in the country. Two years is better, and it is still shorter than the three years or more that many states allow.

A few narrow things suspend or extend prescription. When the injured person is a minor, prescription does not start running until they reach the age of majority. The discovery rule applies to a latent injury, one that was not apparent right after the wreck.

Louisiana also recognizes contra non valentem, which suspends prescription when the injured party had no reasonable way to know about the injury or who caused it. These exceptions are narrow and turn entirely on the facts of the case.

Miss the deadline and the claim is gone permanently. Courts enforce prescription rigidly, and there is effectively no way back in. The full breakdown of Louisiana’s prescriptive periods for personal injury claims covers how the deadlines differ by case type, including bicycle wrecks and other injury claims. Two years sounds like enough, and often it is not. Evidence degrades, witnesses forget, records get harder to assemble. Most people who wait have no idea how much work goes into a claim before the deadline shows up. Find the exact date of your wreck and put the two-year date on a calendar you look at.

No Pay, No Play

Louisiana’s No Pay, No Play law penalizes drivers who were carrying no liability insurance. If you were uninsured when the wreck happened, you cannot collect the first $100,000 in bodily injury damages or the first $100,000 in property damage (La. R.S. 32:866). Act No. 16 of 2025 raised those forfeiture thresholds from the earlier $15,000 and $25,000 figures, effective August 1, 2025.

It is a hard penalty. It does not stop you from filing, but it takes a large piece off the top. If your bodily injury damages come to $30,000, you walk away with $5,000 once the forfeiture applies.

Anything above those thresholds is still yours to pursue. On a serious injury with substantial damages, the forfeiture is a smaller share of the whole, but you need to know that exposure before you evaluate any offer. An attorney handling uninsured motorist claims in Shreveport can run your specific numbers. Other facts can open other doors: a drunk driver or a fatigued commercial operator changes the analysis entirely.

Changes to Direct Action

Louisiana has long let an injured person sue the at-fault driver’s insurance company directly, without suing the driver as a middleman. That is the direct action statute, and most states have nothing like it. Elsewhere you sue the person who hit you and the carrier stays out of sight until a judgment lands.

Direct action gave plaintiffs a real advantage. The jury saw the insurance company’s name on the caption. They knew a corporation, not the neighbor in the second chair, was writing the check. That knowledge moved damage awards.

Act No. 460 of 2025 takes that away effective January 1, 2026. Under the new law the insurer cannot be named as a defendant until after trial. The at-fault driver stands alone as the named defendant the whole way through, and the jury never sees the carrier’s name while it deliberates.

This matters more than it looks. Jury research has consistently shown higher awards when jurors know an insurer is paying and lower awards when they believe an individual is personally on the hook. That dynamic is gone. It also drains settlement pressure, because a carrier whose name stays out of the courtroom has less reason to make a fair offer. The direct action change is one of several recent tort reform changes that moved the balance toward insurers. If your wreck happened before January 1, 2026, confirm that date with your lawyer now, because it decides which set of rules your file lives under.

What Compensation Does Louisiana Law Allow After a Car Accident?

Louisiana sorts car accident damages into two buckets: economic and non-economic. Economic damages are the losses you can add up from receipts, pay stubs, and bills. Non-economic damages cover what has no invoice, like the pain and the parts of your life the injury took.

What your case is worth turns on your own facts. How badly you were hurt, how fault gets allocated under Art. 2323, how much coverage the at-fault driver carried, and how strong your evidence is all move the number. No two files land on the same figure, and any lawyer who quotes you one before reading your medical records is guessing. Our guide to average personal injury settlements in Louisiana covers how those numbers take shape.

Whether what you collect is taxable depends on the category of damages. We break that down on our page about whether personal injury lawsuit proceeds are taxable.

Economic Damages

The losses you can attach a dollar figure to, calculated from bills, records, receipts, and expert projections.

1. Past & future medical.

   Emergency room visits, surgeries, imaging, prescriptions, and the projected cost of treatment still ahead of you, including long-term care.

2. Lost wages.

   Income you lost while you were healing. It covers hourly, salaried, and self-employed work, documented with pay stubs and tax returns.

3. Diminished earning capacity.

   What you lose when the injury permanently cuts your ability to earn. Vocational and economic experts measure the gap between what you could earn before and what you can earn now.

4. Property damage.

   Repair or replacement of the vehicle, plus whatever personal property was in it at the time.

5. Out-of-pocket costs.

   Rides to appointments, home modifications, help around the house, prescriptions. Keep every receipt starting on day one.

6. Rehabilitation.

   Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and cognitive rehab, which can run for months or years after a serious collision.

Non-Economic Damages

The human cost of the injury. Louisiana puts no cap on these in car accident cases; unlike medical malpractice, they are assessed with no artificial ceiling.

1. Pain & suffering.

   The physical pain from the impact forward, including chronic pain that never fully leaves. Courts weigh the type, the intensity, and how long it lasts.

2. Mental anguish.

   Anxiety, depression, PTSD, insomnia, the dread of getting back behind the wheel. Supported by your mental health provider and by your own account.

3. Loss of enjoyment.

   Not being able to get on the floor with your children, hunt, fish, or sit through a church service the way you used to.

4. Scarring & disfigurement.

   Visible scars, burns, and permanent physical change. Courts look at where it is, how visible it is, your age, and what it does to you.

5. Loss of consortium.

   Your spouse’s own claim for the loss of companionship, intimacy, and partnership. See what loss of consortium means.

6. Permanent disability.

   A permanent limp, chronic nerve pain, the career you cannot go back to. Permanence raises the non-economic value substantially.

What Affects Your Case Value

No formula sets what a case is worth. These are the factors that move the number up or down.

1. Injury severity and permanence. A fracture that heals in eight weeks is a different claim from a spinal cord injury that needs lifelong care. The more severe and permanent the injury, the larger both the economic and non-economic damages.
2. Consistency of medical treatment. Gaps cause trouble. Stop seeing your doctor for three months and pick back up, and the carrier will say you were fine during those three months. Steady, documented treatment from the date of the wreck forward is worth real money.
3. Comparative fault percentage. Under La. C.C. Art. 2323, for wrecks on or after January 1, 2026, reaching 51% means you take nothing. Below that, what you collect drops by your percentage.
4. Available insurance policy limits. The at-fault driver’s policy is a practical ceiling. Louisiana’s minimum liability is $25,000 per person. When your damages run past that, your own underinsured motorist coverage is what fills the gap.
5. Pre-existing conditions. Louisiana follows the eggshell plaintiff rule: a defendant takes the plaintiff as they find them. A bad back made worse by the wreck is compensable. It takes medical records that draw a clean line between the before and the after. See prior injuries in personal injury cases.
6. Elimination of the Housley presumption. Act No. 18 of 2025 (La. Code Evid. Art. 306.1, effective May 28, 2025) removed the Housley presumption in civil tort cases. Healthy before and hurting after is no longer enough to establish medical causation. Independent expert medical testimony is required now.
7. Strength and quality of evidence. Police reports, photographs, dashcam video, witness statements, cell records, medical charts. Files built on strong contemporaneous evidence settle for more than files where the proof is thin or contradicts itself.
8. Egregious defendant conduct. A driver who was drunk, texting, or running from police brings recklessness into the case, which can raise its value. In narrow circumstances that conduct supports punitive damages under La. C.C. Art. 2315.4.

The prescriptive period is two years from the date of the wreck under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1. The collateral source rule changed too, under Act No. 432 of 2024. Before you weigh any offer this week, add up the bills you have already paid out of your own pocket, because that is the floor nobody should be asking you to go below.

Google reviews

What Shreveport Clients Say

★★★★★ 1,756 five-star Shreveport office reviews →

• E
  Emma Dvorak
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 3, 2026

  I was overwhelmed dealing with everything after my injury, but their team took a lot of the pressure off of me.They were patient, answered all my questions, and made sure I understood what was happening.

• D
  Diane Didier
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  I was recommended to Trey Morris by a friend, and they have been amazing!They kept me up to date with all the details of my case. I was in the loop during the entire process. Having to go over the details my accident was so uncomfortable, but they were so understanding and made every effort to make the entire process as smooth as possible. I would highly recommend Trey Morris and his team to anyone.

• L
  Laurie Shearin
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  I'll always appreciate the way I was treated here.I felt heard, respected and taken care of from beginning to end.

• Z
  Zachary Krengle
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  Trey Morris and the team treated me so well after my accident.Beyond taking the steps to make sure my case was taken care of timely and apropiatelly. They listened and made me feel like I was a priority to them and not just another client. I hope none of my friends are put in a situation to need them, but if they do I would highly suggest Trey Morris and the team.

• V
  Valorie Schneider
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  Really glad I chose Trey Morris Injury Law.They were easy to work with and made sure I understood what was going on.

• A
  Alayna Cantrell
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  I would recommend Trey Morris to my friends and family.Trey Morris & the team there helped me with my case. The firm is amazing!

• S
  Sunshine Halpert
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  This is the firm you want handling your car accident.Trey Morris Injury Lawyers is the best. Jessica, Seth, and Brian handled my case quickly. They kept me up to date and infor ed the whole time. I will send everyone I know to you guys. Thanks so much!

• A
  Alyx Braud
  Shreveport Office · Sep. 2, 2026

  My mans Trey Trey got it done!All the people at the firm were super friendly and they really made me feel like they cared about my case as much as I did. It didn't take too long and I got my settlement 🤑

Insurance Company Tactics

An adjuster will call you within hours of a Shreveport wreck, and they will be perfectly friendly about it. Their assignment is to close your file for the smallest number that works. Nothing they are trying to accomplish lines up with what you need.

Quick settlement offers. A fast, low number arrives before anyone knows how hurt you are. Taking it means signing a release that permanently ends any additional compensation. Soft tissue damage and concussion symptoms usually get worse before they level off.

Recorded statements. Adjusters describe them as routine or required. They are neither. A recording locks you into one version of events, and even saying you are doing okay comes back later as proof you were not badly hurt. You are not required by law to give one to the other driver’s insurer.

Disputing medical treatment. They will say you did not need the MRI, that therapy should have stopped sooner, that the treatment was excessive, and they will hire their own reviewers to say it for them. See how insurers use malingering arguments.

Pre-existing condition arguments. Any prior injury to the same body part becomes their theory of the case. The legal question is whether the wreck aggravated that condition. They will request years of old records looking for anything they can pin your pain on instead.

Surveillance. Investigators get hired to photograph you carrying groceries, lifting a grandchild, or pulling weeds. They want footage that contradicts what you told your doctor. It is legal. What protects you is that your daily activity and your reported symptoms actually match.

Delay. Asking for the same records three times, taking weeks to return a call, moving your file to a new adjuster. Delay pays them, because bills at home push people toward a number they would never otherwise accept.

What to do when they call. Be polite. Give your name, your phone number, the date, and the location. Do not discuss your injuries, your treatment, or how you feel. Do not agree to a recording. Tell them to call your attorney, and if you do not have one yet, tell them your attorney will be in touch.

The direct action rule changes under Act No. 460 of 2025, effective January 1, 2026. After that date the insurer cannot be named in the suit until after trial, and the jury will not know a carrier is paying.

Your prescriptive period is two years under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1 (Act No. 423 of 2024). Miss it and you lose the right to file. The carrier knows that date as well as you do, and delay is sometimes exactly the point.

Uninsured & Underinsured Motorists

Plenty of drivers in Shreveport carry nothing, and plenty more carry the state minimum. When the person who hit you has no coverage or not enough of it, your own policy becomes the source of the money.

UM and UIM coverage pays you when the at-fault driver cannot. Louisiana requires every auto insurer to offer it, and you can reject it in writing. The claim gets filed against your own company, which owes you good faith and is still working to pay as little as it can. See the uninsured motorist claims page for how those run.

Hit-and-run: when the driver leaves and is never identified, Louisiana treats them as an uninsured motorist. Report the hit-and-run to law enforcement right away, because that report is what preserves your UM claim.

Coverage Stacking & No Pay No Play

With more than one vehicle on a policy, you may be able to stack the UM limits. Two cars carrying $50,000 each can add up to $100,000 if stacking was never waived. Louisiana insurers have to offer stacking, and most policies contain a signed waiver anyway. Your declarations page says which.

No Pay No Play, updated by Act No. 16 of 2025 effective August 1, 2025: with no liability insurance at the time of the wreck, you forfeit the first $100,000 in bodily injury damages and the first $100,000 in property damage. It does not end the claim; it reduces what you can collect. Pull the declarations page for every policy in your household this week and find out in writing whether UM was accepted or rejected, and whether stacking was waived.

Car Accidents in Shreveport

Shreveport sits where two interstates cross, and the metro produces a steady volume of collisions every year. If you were hit here or over in Bossier City, knowing the local crash patterns and the Louisiana fault rules gives you firmer ground to stand on when you weigh your options. The roads themselves shape how these wrecks happen and how the blame gets assigned.

Rear-end crashes are the most common type across the metro. Louisiana presumes the trailing driver is at fault, on the theory that a following driver keeps a safe distance and stays awake. That presumption can be rebutted, though, and adjusters rebut it routinely: you stopped suddenly, you changed lanes without warning, your brake lights were out. Even when you were the one who got hit from behind, expect their carrier to try to move part of the fault onto you.

That effort matters because of comparative fault, the framework a court uses to assign each party a percentage of the blame. Under La. C.C. Art. 2323, what you collect drops by whatever percentage a jury puts on you. Starting January 1, 2026, Act No. 15 of 2025 adds a threshold: at 51% or more, you take nothing. It is a hard cutoff with no exceptions written into it.

On the fast stretches of I-20 and I-49, rear-end wrecks do far more damage than the same crash on a surface street, because the speed differential at impact is what drives the injury. Getting struck at 70 miles per hour produces the forces that cause brain injuries, spinal cord damage, and multiple fractures at once. Those same corridors carry the 18-wheelers and commercial fleets, which bring federal regulations and a different insurance structure with them.

The prescriptive period for personal injury claims in Louisiana is two years from the date of the wreck. Prescriptive period is our term for what most states call a statute of limitations: the deadline for filing suit before the right is gone for good. Act No. 423 of 2024 set that window by amending La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, effective July 1, 2024. Two years sounds long. Investigation, treatment records, and negotiation eat months apiece, and starting early is what keeps your options open.

The collateral source rule changed as well, and it hits your damages directly. Act No. 432 of 2024 took effect January 1, 2025, and it lets payments from collateral sources, your health insurance or an employer benefit, come into evidence to reduce your damages. Juries never saw those payments before. They do now, and it can cut the number substantially, so it belongs in the strategy from the first week.

For the broader picture of how our Shreveport injury lawyers handle these files across practice areas, that page covers the full scope of the work we do in the metro.

High-Risk Roads and Intersections

Certain roads in the Shreveport-Bossier City metro turn up in crash reports again and again, each for its own reason.

• Interstate 20 through downtown Shreveport. Heavy east-west traffic between Dallas and Jackson runs through here. The lane merges near the Texas Street and Market Street exits create pinch points, and rear-end and sideswipe crashes cluster in those merge zones during the morning and evening commute.

• Interstate 49 between Shreveport and South Bossier. I-49 runs north-south through the metro at 65 miles per hour or better. The drop from highway speed to a surface-street exit catches people out, and the deceleration zone on the ramp near Bert Kouns is a documented cluster point for high-speed rear-end crashes.

• Youree Drive from South Shreveport to Pierremont. Shopping centers, restaurants, and medical offices line the whole corridor. Short signal cycles plus constant cross-lane turning produce a steady run of T-bone and left-turn collisions. Cyclists get hit along this stretch too, sharing narrow lanes with heavy traffic.

• Bert Kouns Industrial Loop. This arterial ties I-49 to I-20 along the south edge of town and functions as a highway, except that it has at-grade intersections with signals. Drivers moving at highway speed meet a red light with very little warning, which produces rear-end and intersection crashes.

• Jewella Avenue between Greenwood Road and I-20. A north-south road through mixed residential and commercial blocks. The lighting is inconsistent, the pavement is uneven in stretches, and the pedestrian crossings are poorly marked. Crash frequency climbs after dark, when visibility drops and the traffic volume holds steady.

• The I-20 and I-220 interchange. This multi-level interchange in northwest Shreveport asks drivers to change lanes across short distances. People who do not know the layout make last-second moves, and the ramp geometry cuts the sight lines and leaves no room to correct at highway speed.

Where your wreck happened is itself evidence. Traffic engineering reports, signal timing logs, maintenance records, and the prior crash history of that spot can be pulled through public records requests and used in your case. Note the nearest cross street and mile marker while you still remember them.

How Your Case Moves Forward

A Shreveport car accident claim does not run in a straight line. It moves in phases, and each phase has its own clock, its own requirements, and its own way of going sideways. Knowing the shape of it keeps the wait from feeling like nothing is happening.

A lot of people put off calling a lawyer because the process is opaque to them. That hesitation costs evidence, then witnesses, then money.

The Investigation Phase

The first job is building a factual record. It starts with the police report from the Shreveport Police Department or the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, depending on where the wreck happened, and that report carries the responding officer’s observations, the witness names, and sometimes an early read on fault.

The report is a starting point, not the story. We also collect surveillance footage from nearby businesses, download your vehicle’s event data recorder, and photograph the scene before the road changes.

Intersection cameras along Youree Drive, Bert Kouns, and I-20 catch a great deal, and that footage gets overwritten fast. Some businesses recycle their recordings inside 48 to 72 hours.

Medical records belong to this phase too, because you need documentation connecting your injuries to the collision. Act No. 18 of 2025 eliminated the Housley presumption for civil tort cases, and that presumption used to let a court assume post-wreck treatment came from the wreck. Now causation takes expert medical testimony, which makes early, complete medical documentation worth more than it has ever been.

Filing the Insurance Claim

Once the initial evidence is in hand, a demand goes to the at-fault driver’s carrier. The package carries your medical records, your bills, proof of the income you lost, and a detailed account of how the wreck happened. The carrier assigns an adjuster who reads it and comes back with either an offer or a denial.

Adjusters in Louisiana are trained to find ways to pay less, and the usual first move is arguing that you share fault. That works because of comparative fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323, where a jury or an adjuster puts a percentage on each party. Found 20% at fault, and what you collect drops by 20%.

For wrecks on or after January 1, 2026, Act No. 15 of 2025 changes Art. 2323 to impose a 51% bar. At 51% or more, you take nothing, which is a long way from a system that paid you something even at 99% fault.

When an adjuster starts pushing your percentage, the answer is documentary: how the fault was actually allocated, and exactly why their figure is inflated. That answer matters most when they try to move your share above 50%, because that is the line where the claim disappears.

Negotiation Fails: Filing a Lawsuit

Not every case settles with the carrier. When the offer stays unfair, we file a petition in Caddo Parish District Court. Filing does not mean you are going to trial. It means the court schedule, not the adjuster, now sets the pace.

Louisiana gives you two years from the date of the wreck to file, the prescriptive period, and missing it means permanent dismissal. That two-year window comes from La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, as amended by Act No. 423 of 2024. Treatment, investigation, and negotiation eat most of it before litigation starts.

One more change worth knowing: Act No. 460 of 2025 bars naming the at-fault driver’s insurer in your suit until after trial. For wrecks on or after January 1, 2026, the jury will not know which carrier is involved, and that reshapes how a case gets tried.

Discovery, Mediation, and Trial Preparation

After filing, both sides enter discovery, the formal exchange of evidence, depositions, and document requests. A deposition is a recorded, sworn interview where the lawyers question a witness or a party under oath. In Caddo Parish this phase usually runs six to twelve months, depending on the court’s calendar and how complicated the injuries are.

Most cases pass through mediation first. Mediation is a structured negotiation with a neutral third party, usually a retired judge or a seasoned attorney, whose job is to find the resolution. Most cases that get that far settle there.

If mediation does not resolve it, the case is tried, and a Caddo Parish jury decides both fault and damages.

The collateral source rule changed under Act No. 432 of 2024, effective January 1, 2025. Collateral source payments are what your health insurance or other coverage already paid toward your bills. The jury never used to hear about them. Now the defense can put them in evidence to reduce your damages.

Realistic Timelines

A straightforward Shreveport case with clear liability and treatment that has ended usually settles in four to eight months. Serious injuries stretch that to eighteen months or three years, and longer when a spinal or brain injury needs future care projections. Nobody can value the claim until your doctors can give a clear prognosis.

There is no path that is both fast and fair. Pushing a case to settlement while the treatment is unfinished leaves money on the table every time, and any lawyer who has tried a case in the courthouse on Texas Street will tell you the same thing. Whether your attorney has actually tried cases in Caddo Parish shapes every stage of the file, starting with knowing when it is ripe to settle.

The type of wreck moves the timeline too. Bicycle and pedestrian cases carry different coverage questions and more complicated injury patterns. Ask about your specific facts at the first meeting, and bring the date of the wreck, the report number, and your declarations page with you.

Down the street, not a call center

Your Shreveport Trial Team

Meet all 11 attorneys →

The lawyers who work your file. Every Shreveport case is handled by the firm's own trial attorneys.

• Trey Morris Founding Partner
• Brian F. Trainor Attorney
• Elizabeth Hancock Attorney
• Meghan Nolen Attorney
• Joseph B. Odom Attorney
• Caitlin Nerren Attorney
• Seth Blackledge Attorney
• Austin Townsend Attorney
• Maliyah Shavers Attorney
• Lane Robinson Attorney
• Coleman Nerren Attorney