Shreveport Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

Pedestrians in Shreveport are struck on Youree Drive, Line Avenue, Jewella Avenue, and Bert Kouns, in crosswalks and mid-block, and the people hit there are taken to Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport on Kings Highway, the Level I trauma center, or to Willis-Knighton on Greenwood Road or CHRISTUS Highland. The Shreveport Police Department writes the report inside the city limits, and the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office writes it outside them. Caddo suits are filed and tried in the First Judicial District Court at 501 Texas Street. Trey Morris Injury Lawyers is at 509 Milam Street, across the street from the Caddo Parish Courthouse. In the first week we pull the crash report, photograph the crossing, and send preservation letters to the businesses whose cameras face the road.

The law that governs the claim is Louisiana law and it does not change from parish to parish. Your claim runs on a two-year clock under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1 if the strike happened on or after July 1, 2024. If it happened on or after January 1, 2026, a finding that you were 51% at fault under Art. 2323 ends the case and you collect nothing. We start on the crosswalk fault evidence early, before an insurer can push your share of the blame over that bar.

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 Pedestrian Accident in Shreveport

1. Get emergency medical care first. A person struck by a vehicle can have internal bleeding or a brain injury that shows nothing at the scene. Adrenaline covers pain for hours. Accept the transport. A chart created that day ties what is wrong with you to the vehicle that hit you, and that link is hard for an insurer to argue around later.

2. Make sure law enforcement responds. The officer writes down the location, the lighting, the road conditions, what the driver said, and any citation, while all of it is still fresh. If you are hurt too badly to stay, a companion or a witness can wait for the officer. That report becomes the spine of the case on the day the driver decides you stepped out in front of him.

3. Get the driver’s information and the vehicle details. Name, phone, carrier, policy number. Plate, make, model, color. If it is a work truck, copy whatever is painted on the door. In a hit-and-run, write down everything you saw before the memory softens, and report it to law enforcement, because that report is what keeps an uninsured motorist claim alive.

4. Document the scene if you are able. Photograph the crosswalk or the spot where you stepped off, the signal head, where the vehicle came to rest, the skid marks, the debris, and every visible injury. Take wide frames showing the whole intersection and any paint on the pavement. If you cannot hold a phone, ask a bystander. Weeks later an adjuster can argue with your memory. Arguing with your photographs is harder.

5. Collect witness names and phone numbers. Bystanders scatter within minutes. In a pedestrian collision, one neutral person who saw whether you were inside the lines and whether the driver ever slowed can settle the entire fault dispute. Get a name and a number before they pull away.

6. Keep following up on your medical care. Some of this stays quiet at first. Traumatic brain injury symptoms can take 24 to 72 hours to surface. Internal bleeding shows nothing from the outside. Go to every follow-up and do what the doctor tells you. A gap in treatment is the first thing an adjuster points at when arguing your injuries are not serious. See our guide on delayed-onset injuries.

7. Report the accident to your own insurance company. Your own auto policy can carry uninsured motorist coverage that pays even though you were on foot. Give them the date, the time, the location, and the driver’s information. Do not guess at fault, and do not walk them through your injuries.

8. Keep all medical records and receipts. The emergency room bill, the imaging reports, the prescriptions, the physical therapy invoices, the mileage log. Those pages are what economic damages get built from: medical bills, lost wages, and out-of-pocket costs you can prove on paper.

9. Talk to an attorney before signing anything. The driver’s insurer will call within days and will sound perfectly pleasant. Their job is to close your file for as little as the company can pay. Before you sign a release, accept a check, or give a recorded statement, talk to a lawyer. There are real reasons people delay seeking legal advice after an accident, and nearly every one of them ends up costing the person who waited.

This week, start one folder and put the photographs, the report number, the driver’s information, and every receipt in it. Give us the date and the location, and we will pull the crash report ourselves.

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.

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  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 Pedestrian Claim

Careful people make the same handful of errors after a vehicle hits them. It is not poor judgment. Nobody ever sat them down and explained how an insurer and Louisiana tort law treat a person who was on foot.

1. Telling the driver or the adjuster where you crossed before you have counsel. Saying you never saw the car, or that you were not quite in the crosswalk, feels like plain honesty. It gets written down as an admission and used to raise your fault percentage. Louisiana splits fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323. For an accident on or after January 1, 2026, reaching 51% means you collect nothing. One offhand sentence at the curb is ammunition.

2. Giving a recorded statement without legal counsel. The adjuster is paid to protect the company’s money. The recorded statement exists to lock you into a version of where you stepped and whether you looked. If your memory shifts, or the injuries turn out worse than anyone first thought, that recording gets read back to you. You are not required to give one to the driver’s insurer.

3. Posting about the accident on social media. Insurance defense teams read social platforms. A photograph of you standing up at a family cookout becomes an argument that you are fine. A comment about the crash gets quoted without the sentence around it. Post nothing about the accident, your treatment, or how your body feels until the claim is closed.

4. Delaying medical treatment or skipping follow-ups. Wait to see a doctor and the insurer argues the vehicle did not cause the injury. Skip appointments and you hand them the same argument. Consistency matters more here than in an ordinary crash, because these injuries are serious enough that any gap looks strange to a jury. The prescriptive period is two years under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1. Miss that date and the claim is gone.

5. Accepting the first settlement offer without legal review. Early offers are priced to close the file cheaply, and they arrive before anyone knows the full extent of a brain injury or spinal damage that will need years of care. Sign the release and there is no going back. A legal review tells you whether the number covers future medical costs and lost earning capacity or only the bills already on your table.

These apply to anyone a motor vehicle strikes, on foot or on two wheels. If you were riding when a car hit you, our Shreveport bicycle accident page covers what changes for cyclists. This week, set your social accounts to private and let the adjuster’s call go to voicemail.

Pedestrian Accidents in Shreveport

Shreveport sits where I-20 and I-49 cross, and the commercial corridors feeding them carry heavy traffic right past people on foot. The roads here create particular risks for anyone walking.

A pedestrian collision is rarely a fender-bender. An unprotected body against a few thousand pounds of steel means even a low-speed impact does real damage, and a high-speed impact is frequently catastrophic. Vehicle speed is the single largest factor in how badly a pedestrian is hurt: stopping distance, the distance over which the force is absorbed, whether the driver braked at all before contact.

Sightlines matter nearly as much. Shreveport corridors mix high-volume traffic with cars turning across lanes, uneven lighting, and crossings that are faded or missing outright. A driver turning across a crosswalk, a vehicle hidden behind a larger one in the next lane, a dark stretch of pavement: any of those leaves a person invisible until impact. Those conditions become the facts a fault dispute turns on.

Comparative fault shapes every pedestrian claim in this state. A jury hands each party a percentage of the blame, and under La. C.C. Art. 2323 your compensation drops by whatever percentage lands on you. For accidents on or after January 1, 2026, Act No. 15 of 2025 adds a hard cutoff at 51%, with no exceptions. Expect the driver’s insurer to argue you crossed against the signal, crossed mid-block, stepped off the curb without looking, or were staring at your phone. Every one of those arguments is aimed at that bar.

The filing deadline is two years from the date of the accident. Prescriptive period is the Louisiana term for a statute of limitations: file by that date or the right to bring the claim is extinguished. Act No. 423 of 2024 set it, amending La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, effective July 1, 2024. Two years sounds like plenty of room. It is not, once crash investigation, months of treatment, and insurance negotiation eat into it.

High-Risk Roads and Intersections for Pedestrians

A handful of roads around here show up over and over in crash reports, and several of them are hard on people walking. If your accident happened at one of these, the location itself is part of your claim.

• Youree Drive from South Shreveport to Pierremont. Shopping centers, restaurants, and medical offices line this corridor, which is exactly what puts people on foot beside that traffic. Short signal cycles and constant turning across lanes push drivers and pedestrians into the same square of pavement all day.

• Line Avenue. A north-south commercial street with storefronts and houses mixed together, where people cross between the parking and the front door. Cars turning in and out of those lots create the exposure.

• Jewella Avenue between Greenwood Road and Interstate 20. It runs north and south through residential and commercial blocks. Lighting is inconsistent and the pedestrian crossings are poorly marked in several stretches, so the risk climbs sharply after dark.

• Bert Kouns Industrial Loop. It connects I-49 to I-20 along the southern edge of Shreveport and functions as a de facto highway with signalized intersections dropped into it. Anyone crossing meets vehicles moving at highway speed with highway stopping distance.

• Interstate 20 and Interstate 49 frontage and service roads. Pedestrians are not permitted on the interstates themselves, but the frontage roads and the crossings near the ramps mix highway-speed traffic transitioning onto surface streets. A driver coming off a ramp is not looking for a person on foot, and neither of you has much margin.

Signal timing logs, traffic engineering reports, lighting and maintenance records, and the prior crash history at a location can all be pulled through public records requests and put in front of a jury. Where the roadway itself contributed, that same paper supports a claim against the entity responsible for the road. If your crash happened at one of these spots, go back this week at the same hour of day and photograph what the driver could actually see.

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 Pedestrian Accident Injuries

Pedestrian injuries sit at the severe end of personal injury law, because the body absorbs the whole force of the impact with nothing between it and the vehicle. Type and severity are the single largest factor in what a case is worth. That is not a legal opinion. It is the arithmetic insurers and juries both use.

Some injuries are obvious at the scene. A broken femur or a deep laceration gets the paramedics moving right away. Others say nothing for a while. Brain injuries, internal bleeding, and spinal damage can take hours or days to announce themselves, and a person knocked onto the pavement often has more than one of them at once.

That gap between the impact and the first symptom is a real problem for the claim. Without medical documentation tying those symptoms to the collision, an insurer will argue the injury came from somewhere else. It is one of the reasons people who put off legal advice after an accident end up collecting less than the claim was worth.

The prescriptive period for most pedestrian claims is two years from the date of the accident under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1 (effective July 1, 2024). Building a case around a serious injury takes medical records, expert evaluations, and evidence preserved before it disappears, and that work starts immediately. Because these injuries are often catastrophic, the case overlaps with catastrophic injury claims, where severity and length of treatment drive the damages.

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  Traumatic Brain Injuries The head strikes the hood, the windshield, or the pavement, and the brain is injured with or without a skull fracture. Symptoms arrive late. Neuropsychological testing produces numbers an insurer cannot wave off as subjective.

  A traumatic brain injury comes from the head hitting the hood, the windshield, or the roadway, or from the brain moving inside the skull on impact. They run from concussion to permanent cognitive impairment. Confusion, memory trouble, and sensitivity to light often surface days later and get missed in the first triage. Neuropsychological testing puts standardized, measurable data behind the injury and turns it into economic damages a jury can price.

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  Spinal Cord Injuries Complete or incomplete injury decides the type of paralysis. Lifetime care costs run higher than in any other category. Valuing one takes real work on future medical costs and lost earning capacity.

  Spinal cord injuries come from compression, severing, or swelling after a pedestrian is struck and thrown. A complete injury leaves no function below the damage point. An incomplete injury leaves partial movement or sensation. Lifetime care, including home modifications, an accessible vehicle, attendant care, and physical therapy, together with lost earning capacity, makes these among the highest-value cases in personal injury law. They take expert witnesses who can calculate future medical costs in a way a jury will accept.

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  Fractures and Crush Injuries Pedestrian impacts break legs, pelvises, and ribs. Surgical fractures mean plates, screws, or rods and months of healing. What it costs you depends heavily on the work you do.

  A vehicle striking a person on foot frequently fractures legs, pelvis, hips, ribs, and arms, and can crush a limb that gets pinned. Surgical fractures require plates, screws, or rods, and healing measured in months. Nonunion, where the bone fails to knit, means another surgery and substantially higher bills. The economic damage tracks the job you hold: a desk worker with a broken wrist is out for weeks, a manual laborer with a fractured pelvis for months.

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  Internal Injuries Nothing shows at the scene. Adrenaline covers the pain while the bleeding builds underneath. A ruptured spleen or a lacerated liver is life-threatening within hours.

  Internal injuries, meaning organ damage or bleeding inside the body, produce no external sign at the scene. Adrenaline covers the pain while swelling and blood build up out of sight. A ruptured spleen or a lacerated liver is life-threatening within hours, and by the time symptoms are obvious the situation is critical. That is the strongest argument for a full medical evaluation after a vehicle hits you, even when you feel more or less normal. Gaps in treatment become ammunition for an insurer arguing your injuries have nothing to do with the crash.

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  Soft Tissue, Nerve, and Disc Injuries A clean X-ray does not mean a minor injury. Herniated discs and nerve damage send pain down an arm or a leg and can end in surgery. Louisiana law compensates the aggravation of a condition you already had.

  A person thrown to the ground tears ligaments, damages muscle, and injures discs. A herniated disc happens when the outer layer tears and the inner material presses on nearby nerves, sending pain, numbness, and weakness into the arms or legs. Insurers argue, predictably, that no fracture means no real injury. Louisiana law does not bar compensation for the aggravation of a pre-existing condition, but you need records documenting the before and the after clearly.

The worst of these go to the Level I trauma center at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport on Kings Highway, and Willis-Knighton treats serious trauma across the metro as well. Documenting what happened to your body is half the job. The other half is proving the driver caused it. Ask your treating physician this week for the complete record and the itemized bills, not the discharge summary.

Proving Fault in a Pedestrian Accident

Winning a pedestrian claim in Louisiana takes more than telling your side of it. You need evidence that the driver was negligent. Negligence has four required elements, and the case fails if any one of them is missing.

The four are duty of care, breach, causation, and damages. Every driver in Shreveport owes a duty to the people on foot around them: keep a proper lookout, yield where the law says to yield, and drive at a speed that fits the conditions. That duty rests on the foundational negligence principle of Louisiana law, La. C.C. Art. 2315, which makes a person who causes damage to another responsible for repairing it. Breach means the driver broke that duty, by failing to yield in a crosswalk, speeding, running a signal, or not seeing a person a careful driver would have seen. Causation connects the breach to your specific injuries. Damages means actual, documented losses. No documented losses, no claim.

Pedestrian cases turn on two battlegrounds: the crosswalk and the fault allocation. Where you were when the vehicle struck you, whether a signal governed the crossing, and whether the driver could have seen and avoided you frame nearly every dispute. Inside a marked crosswalk with the signal, you have a strong right-of-way argument. Crossing mid-block or against the light draws a jaywalking argument, but that is not an absolute defense. The driver still owed a duty to keep a proper lookout and to avoid a foreseeable hazard. The jury divides the fault between you.

Comparative fault makes that division decisive. 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 for accidents on or after January 1, 2026. Before that change, Louisiana ran a pure comparative fault system in which a plaintiff at 99% fault still collected 1%. With the bar in place, the driver’s insurer has a strong financial reason to shovel blame onto the person who was walking, and in a jaywalking case that incentive is at its sharpest.

One more change matters here. In 2025, Act No. 459 eliminated the Housley presumption in civil tort cases. Housley was a shortcut: healthy before the crash, symptoms after it, and the courts presumed the crash caused them. It no longer applies. You now need expert medical testimony to tie the collision to your injuries, which makes causation harder and expert witnesses more important than they were a year ago. If you had prior injuries, the adjuster will argue your symptoms are all pre-existing.

What a Strong Fault Investigation Looks Like

We pull the police report, the witness statements, and whatever physical evidence survives. In a pedestrian case the point of impact, where the vehicle came to rest, the skid marks, and where your belongings landed let an expert work backward to speed and to whether the driver ever braked. We go after traffic camera and business surveillance video before it is overwritten, because it often answers the crosswalk question outright and shows whether the vehicle slowed. We locate independent witnesses early, since their accounts carry the most weight on where you were standing. When evidence is at risk, a spoliation letter goes out to whoever is holding it.

Evidence has a shelf life. Surveillance systems at Shreveport businesses overwrite on cycles as short as 48 hours. Vehicles get repaired or hauled to a salvage yard before anyone downloads the data. Witness memories go soft within weeks. An investigation opened within days of the crash protects the evidence that protects the claim, and waiting months to get legal advice means losing paper that cannot be recreated.

When liability is disputed, we hire accident reconstruction experts. They use the physical evidence, the damage pattern, and the skid marks to establish vehicle speed and how the collision happened, which is central where speed governs both fault and injury severity. Modern vehicles carry an Event Data Recorder, the black box, which records speed, braking, and steering input in the seconds before a crash. That data is objective and hard to dispute. We subpoena cell phone records when distraction is suspected, because a text timestamped seconds before impact is about as clean a proof of breach as this work offers.

Identifying All Liable Parties

The driver is not always the only party responsible. Liability means legal responsibility for causing harm, and Louisiana law allows claims against every party whose negligence contributed. Naming all of them changes both the insurance available and how the fault percentages get divided.

If the driver was working at the time, the employer answers for it under a doctrine called respondeat superior (La. C.C. Art. 2320). The Latin means let the master answer. It holds an employer responsible for what an employee does within the scope of the job, and it often opens a commercial policy far larger than any personal one. Delivery drivers, sales representatives, and commercial vehicle operators all fall in this category.

Government entities responsible for road design and maintenance carry fault in pedestrian cases more often than in ordinary crashes, because so many of these collisions involve a faded or missing crosswalk, a pedestrian signal that does not work, poor lighting, or a badly built intersection. Claims against them run under the Louisiana Governmental Claims Act, La. R.S. 13:5101 and carry shorter, separate deadlines, including a 90-day notice requirement under La. R.S. 13:5107 before suit and the notice provisions of La. R.S. 13:5106. Miss a government notice deadline and that portion of your claim is gone, even where the road defect plainly contributed.

Bring us the date, the exact location, and the agency that worked the crash, and we will confirm those notice deadlines in writing before the clock runs out on them.

Louisiana Laws That Affect Your Pedestrian Claim

Louisiana is the only state whose legal system grew out of French and Spanish civil law rather than English common law. That is not a footnote for historians. The rules governing your pedestrian claim look different from what you would find in Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi. The words are different, the deadlines are different, and a strategy that works across the state line can fail here.

A Caddo Parish case is filed in the First Judicial District Court at 501 Texas Street, across the street from our office at 509 Milam Street, and it runs under that court’s local rules, the same ones a Shreveport injury attorney works under every week.

Comparative Fault and the Crosswalk Question

Comparative fault is the framework courts use to divide responsibility among everyone involved. Each person is assigned a percentage, and your compensation drops by whatever percentage lands on you. If your damages total $200,000 and the jury puts 25% on you, you collect $150,000. At 40% fault, that number falls to $120,000.

For accidents before January 1, 2026, La. C.C. Art. 2323 runs a pure comparative fault system, which means a plaintiff assigned 99% of the fault still collects 1% of the damages. Act No. 15 of 2025 amended Art. 2323 to impose a 51% bar, effective January 1, 2026. For any accident on or after that date, a plaintiff assigned 51% or more of the fault collects nothing.

In pedestrian cases that change lands hard. The insurer will argue you crossed outside a crosswalk, crossed against a signal, stepped into the road without looking, or were distracted. Under the bar, pushing your share to 51% wipes out the entire claim rather than trimming it. None of those arguments decides anything by itself. Crossing outside a crosswalk is one fact the jury weighs against the driver’s duty to keep a proper lookout and to drive at a safe speed.

The Filing Deadline

Louisiana does not use the term statute of limitations. It calls the filing deadline a prescriptive period. Prescription is a civil code concept that extinguishes your right to bring a claim after a set period. Once it runs, the claim is gone regardless of how strong the evidence is.

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

A few exceptions suspend or extend prescription. For an injured child, it does not begin to run until they reach the age of majority, which comes up often here because children are frequently the ones struck. The discovery rule applies to a latent injury, and contra non valentem suspends prescription when the injured party had no reasonable way of knowing about the injury or who caused it. These exceptions are narrow and turn entirely on the facts. You can read the full breakdown of Louisiana’s prescriptive periods for personal injury claims and see how the deadlines differ by case type.

Government Claims and Their Shorter Deadlines

Because so many pedestrian collisions involve a crossing, a signal, or a defect in the roadway, claims against a government entity come up more often here than in an ordinary crash. They are governed by the Louisiana Governmental Claims Act (La. R.S. 13:5101) and carry shorter, separate deadlines: a 90-day notice requirement under La. R.S. 13:5107, plus the notice rules in La. R.S. 13:5106. Where a dangerous road condition, a dead pedestrian signal, or a missing crosswalk contributed, the entity that maintains it shares liability, but only if that notice deadline was met.

When the Driver Is Uninsured or Unidentified

Louisiana’s No Pay, No Play law (La. R.S. 32:866) penalizes a person who owned a vehicle but carried no required liability insurance. The more common pedestrian situation is different: the driver who struck you has no insurance, too little of it, or left the scene. Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage can apply even though you were on foot, because UM coverage follows the insured person rather than the car. Louisiana requires every auto insurer to offer it, though it can be waived in writing, and plenty of people signed that waiver at a kitchen table years ago without knowing what they gave up. In a hit-and-run, Louisiana treats the unidentified driver as an uninsured motorist, so report it to law enforcement promptly to keep that claim alive. This week, pull the declarations page for every auto policy in your household and confirm in writing whether UM coverage was accepted or rejected and at what limits. An attorney handling uninsured motorist claims in Shreveport can tell you how that coverage reaches your facts.

Changes to Direct Action

Louisiana has long allowed an injured person to sue the at-fault driver’s insurance company directly, without suing the driver as an intermediary, under what is called the direct action statute. Most states do not allow it. That rule gave plaintiffs a strategic advantage: the jury saw the insurer’s name and knew a corporation, not an individual, would pay any judgment.

Act No. 460 of 2025 ends that advantage, effective January 1, 2026. Under the new law the insurer cannot be named as a defendant until after trial. The driver is the only named defendant throughout the proceeding, and the jury never sees the insurance company’s name during deliberations.

Jury research consistently shows higher awards when jurors know an insurer is paying and lower awards when they believe an individual is personally on the hook. Taking the name off the caption removes that dynamic and reduces settlement pressure. It is one of several recent Louisiana tort reform changes that alter how a pedestrian case has to be built. Write down the date of your accident and hold it against July 1, 2024 and January 1, 2026, because those two dates decide which version of the law governs you.

What Compensation Does Louisiana Law Allow After a Pedestrian Accident?

Louisiana sorts pedestrian accident damages into two buckets. Economic damages are the losses with a receipt behind them, calculated from bills, pay stubs, and expert projections. Non-economic damages cover what never comes with an invoice: the pain, and the parts of your daily life the injury took. There is no statutory cap on damages in general personal injury cases in this state.

What your case is worth turns on injury severity, the fault allocation under comparative fault, the insurance actually available, and the quality of your evidence. An attorney who quotes a figure before reading your medical records and the crash file is guessing. You can read how settlements take shape in our guide to average personal injury settlements in Louisiana.

Economic Damages

Financial losses you can put a dollar figure on, built out of documentation: bills, records, receipts, and expert projections.

1. Past and future medical.

   Emergency care, surgery, imaging, prescriptions, and the projected cost of future treatment, including long-term care. In a catastrophic pedestrian injury, the future-care projection is usually the largest single number in the case.

2. Lost wages.

   Income lost while you were healing. Hourly, salaried, and self-employed alike, documented with pay stubs and tax returns.

3. Diminished earning capacity.

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

4. Rehabilitation.

   Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and cognitive rehabilitation. After a serious pedestrian injury this can run for months or years.

5. Out-of-pocket costs.

   Transportation to appointments, home modifications, help around the house, and assistive equipment. Keep every receipt from day one.

Non-Economic Damages

The human cost of the injury. Louisiana puts no cap on these in general personal injury cases.

1. Pain and suffering.

   Physical pain from the moment of impact through treatment, including chronic pain that never fully leaves. Courts weigh type, intensity, and duration.

2. Mental anguish.

   Anxiety, depression, PTSD, and the fear of crossing a street or walking near traffic. Supported by testimony from a mental health provider and by your own account.

3. Loss of enjoyment.

   Not being able to get down on the floor with your children, keep up a hobby, or do the things you did before the accident.

4. Scarring and disfigurement.

   Visible scars and permanent physical change, common in pedestrian impacts. Courts weigh location, visibility, age, and psychological impact.

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, or the end of the career you had. Non-economic value rises substantially with permanence.

Driver conduct moves the value too. A driver who was intoxicated, fleeing, or driving recklessly brings conduct that, in rare cases, supports punitive damages under La. C.C. Art. 2315.4. The collateral source rule also changed under Act No. 432 of 2024, which affects how much of your medical expense the jury sees. This week, start a running list of everything you have had to stop doing since the crash, with dates on it. That list becomes the non-economic side of your case.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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!

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  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 🤑

How Your Pedestrian Case Moves Forward

A pedestrian accident claim in Shreveport does not run in a straight line. It moves in phases, and each phase has its own timeline and its own way of going sideways.

People often wait to call a lawyer because nobody has told them how any of this works. In a pedestrian case, that hesitation costs evidence on the two questions that decide everything: where you were standing, and how fast the vehicle was going.

The Investigation Phase

The first job is building the factual record. It starts with the police report, from the Shreveport Police Department or the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office depending on where the collision happened, carrying the officer’s observations, the witness names, and sometimes a preliminary read on fault. That report is a starting point, not the whole story. We also collect surveillance footage from nearby businesses, pull the data off the vehicle’s event data recorder, and document the scene before conditions change.

Intersection and business cameras along corridors like Youree Drive, Line Avenue, and Bert Kouns can show whether you were in the crosswalk and whether the vehicle slowed, but that footage gets overwritten quickly, sometimes within 48 to 72 hours. Medical records belong to this phase too. Under Louisiana’s recent tort reform, the Housley presumption has been eliminated for civil tort cases by Act No. 18 of 2025, so expert medical testimony now carries the causation question. Early, thorough medical documentation matters more than it ever has.

Filing the Insurance Claim

Once the initial evidence is in hand, we send a demand to the driver’s carrier with your medical records, the bills, proof of lost income, and a detailed account of how the collision happened. The insurer assigns an adjuster, who comes back with an offer or a denial. Adjusters here are trained to look for ways to pay less, and in pedestrian cases the standard move is arguing you share fault for stepping into the road. That matters because Louisiana divides fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323, and Act No. 15 of 2025 imposes the 51% bar for accidents on or after January 1, 2026: at 51% or more, you collect nothing. When the adjuster starts assigning you a percentage, we answer with the photographs, the video, and the reconstruction.

Filing a Lawsuit

Not every case settles during the insurance phase. When the offer stays too low, we file a petition in the First Judicial District Court for Caddo Parish, across the street from our office. Filing suit does not mean you are going to trial. It means the court system is now what makes the insurer take the claim seriously. Louisiana gives you two years from the date of the accident under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, as amended by Act No. 423 of 2024. Miss it and the court dismisses the case permanently. One more change: Act No. 460 of 2025 prohibits naming the driver’s insurance company until after trial, so for accidents on or after January 1, 2026 the jury will not know which insurer is involved.

Discovery, Mediation, and Trial

After the petition is filed, both sides enter discovery, the formal exchange of evidence, documents, and depositions. A deposition is a recorded, sworn interview where the lawyers question a witness under oath. In Caddo Parish this phase typically runs several months, depending on the court calendar and the complexity of the injuries. Most cases go through mediation before trial, a structured negotiation with a neutral third party, and most that reach mediation settle there. If it does not resolve there, a Caddo Parish jury hears the evidence and decides both fault and damages.

Realistic Timelines

A straightforward pedestrian case with clear liability and injuries that have healed can settle in several months. One built on a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury, where future care has to be projected before anyone can value the claim, can run eighteen months to three years or longer. We wait until your doctors give a clear prognosis before putting a number on it, because settling mid-treatment leaves money on the table. Nothing gets you both speed and a fair result. Bring the crash date, the report number, and your medical records to our office at 509 Milam Street, and we will walk the phases with your own facts in front of us.

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