Shreveport Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

What to Do After a Pedestrian Accident in Shreveport

The hours after a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle in Shreveport shape every claim that follows. A pedestrian rarely walks away from a collision the way a driver does, so the first priority is medical care. What gets documented at the scene, and in the days after, becomes the foundation of any insurance claim or lawsuit.

1. Get emergency medical care first. A pedestrian struck by a vehicle can have internal injuries or a brain injury that produces no obvious symptoms at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain. Accept transport to the hospital. A medical evaluation creates a documented link between the crash and your injuries that an insurer cannot easily dispute later.

2. Make sure law enforcement responds. A police report documents the crash while details are fresh: location, road conditions, lighting, driver statements, and any citation. If you are too injured to stay, a companion or witness can wait for the responding officer. That report becomes a key piece of evidence when the driver disputes who had the right of way.

3. Get the driver’s information and the vehicle details. Record the driver’s name, phone, insurance carrier, and policy number. Note the license plate, make, model, and color. If the vehicle is commercial, note any name on the door. In a hit-and-run, write down whatever you saw before it fades, and report it to law enforcement to preserve a possible uninsured motorist claim.

4. Document the scene if you are able. Photograph the crosswalk or where you crossed, the signal, the vehicle’s resting position, skid marks, road debris, and your visible injuries. Wide shots showing the intersection and any pedestrian markings matter. If you cannot, ask a bystander to capture it. This evidence is difficult for an insurer to dispute weeks later.

5. Collect witness names and phone numbers. Bystanders leave quickly. In a pedestrian collision, an independent witness who saw whether you were in the crosswalk and whether the driver slowed can decide the fault dispute. If someone saw the crash, get their name and a way to reach them.

6. Keep following up on your medical care. Some pedestrian injuries do not produce immediate pain. Traumatic brain injury symptoms can develop over 24 to 72 hours. Internal bleeding produces no visible signs. Attend every follow-up appointment and follow your doctor’s instructions. Gaps in treatment give an insurer an argument that 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 may carry uninsured motorist coverage that applies even when you are on foot. Give your insurer the basic facts: date, time, location, and the driver’s information. Do not speculate about fault, and do not describe your injuries in detail.

8. Keep all medical records and receipts. Save everything: emergency room bills, imaging reports, prescriptions, physical therapy invoices, and mileage logs. These documents form the basis for calculating economic damages, including medical bills, lost wages, and out-of-pocket costs you can verify with records.

9. Talk to an attorney before signing anything. The driver’s insurer will call within days. They will sound helpful. They are not on your side. 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 most of those reasons end up working against the injured person.

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Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Pedestrian Claim

Good people make avoidable errors after being struck by a vehicle. These mistakes do not reflect poor judgment. They reflect a lack of information about how insurance claims and Louisiana tort law treat pedestrian cases specifically.

1. Telling the driver or the adjuster where you crossed before you have counsel. Saying “I didn’t see the car” or “I wasn’t in the crosswalk” feels like honesty. But any statement can be treated as an admission and used to inflate your fault percentage. Louisiana applies comparative fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323. For accidents on or after January 1, 2026, reaching 51% fault means you recover nothing. A casual remark at the scene gives the insurer ammunition.

2. Giving a recorded statement without legal counsel. The adjuster’s job is to protect their company’s money. In pedestrian cases, recorded statements are aimed at locking you into a version of where you stepped and whether you looked. If your memory shifts or your injuries worsen, that early statement undermines your credibility. You are not legally required to give one to the driver’s insurer.

3. Posting about the accident on social media. Insurance defense teams monitor social platforms. A photo of you walking comfortably at a family gathering can be used to argue your injuries are not serious. A comment about the crash can be taken out of context. Post nothing about the accident, your treatment, or your physical condition until your claim is resolved.

4. Delaying medical treatment or skipping follow-ups. If you wait to see a doctor, the insurer will argue the vehicle did not cause your injury. Gaps create the same problem. Consistency matters more in pedestrian cases because the injuries are often severe enough that any treatment gap looks suspicious. Louisiana’s prescriptive period is now two years under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1. Miss that deadline and you lose the right to pursue the claim entirely.

5. Accepting the first settlement offer without legal review. Early offers are calculated to close the file cheaply. They arrive before you know the full extent of injuries that, in pedestrian cases, often include a brain injury or spinal damage requiring future care. Once you sign a release, you cannot go back for more. A legal review determines whether the offer reflects the claim’s full value, including future medical costs and lost earning capacity.

These mistakes apply to anyone struck by a motor vehicle, whether on foot or on a bicycle. If you were riding when a vehicle hit you, the same principles apply. Our Shreveport bicycle accident page covers the issues cyclists face after a collision.

Pedestrian Accidents in Shreveport

Shreveport sits at the intersection of two major interstate highways, and its commercial corridors carry heavy traffic alongside foot traffic. The roads here create specific risks for pedestrians.

A pedestrian collision is rarely a fender-bender. The disparity between an unprotected person and a multi-thousand-pound vehicle means even a low-speed impact can produce serious injury, and a high-speed impact is frequently catastrophic. Vehicle speed is the single largest factor in pedestrian injury severity. A driver’s ability to stop, the distance over which the impact forces are absorbed, and whether the driver braked at all before contact all turn on speed.

Sightlines matter nearly as much. Many Shreveport corridors mix high-volume traffic with cross-lane turning movements, inconsistent lighting, and poorly marked or absent pedestrian crossings. A driver turning across a crosswalk, a vehicle obscured by a larger one in the next lane, or a poorly lit stretch of road can leave a pedestrian invisible until impact. These same conditions become the facts a fault dispute turns on.

Louisiana’s comparative fault rule shapes every pedestrian claim. Comparative fault is the legal framework courts use to assign a percentage of blame to each party. Under La. C.C. Art. 2323, your compensation is reduced by whatever percentage of fault a jury assigns to you. Starting January 1, 2026, a new threshold applies under Act No. 15 of 2025: if you are assigned 51% or more of the fault, you recover nothing. That is a hard cutoff with no exceptions. In pedestrian cases, the driver’s insurer will argue you crossed against a signal, crossed mid-block, stepped off a curb without looking, or were distracted, each argument designed to push your fault toward that bar.

Louisiana’s prescriptive period for personal injury claims is now two years from the date of the accident. Prescriptive period is the Louisiana term for what most states call a statute of limitations. It is the deadline by which you must file suit or permanently lose the right to bring the claim. This two-year window was established by Act No. 423 of 2024, amending La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, effective July 1, 2024. Two years sounds like a long time. For a pedestrian recovering from a serious injury, it is not, because crash investigation, extended medical treatment, and insurance negotiation all consume months.

High-Risk Roads and Intersections for Pedestrians

Certain roads and intersections in the Shreveport area appear repeatedly in crash reports, and several present specific hazards for people on foot. If your accident happened at one of these locations, the location itself is relevant to your claim.

• Youree Drive from South Shreveport to Pierremont. This commercial corridor is lined with shopping centers, restaurants, and medical offices that generate pedestrian traffic. Short signal cycles and constant cross-lane turning movements produce frequent conflicts between turning vehicles and people crossing.

• Line Avenue. A north-south commercial street with mixed retail and residential frontage, where pedestrians cross between parking and storefronts. Turning movements and on-street activity create exposure for anyone on foot.

• Jewella Avenue between Greenwood Road and Interstate 20. This north-south road passes through mixed residential and commercial areas. Lighting is inconsistent and pedestrian crossings are poorly marked in several stretches. Risk increases after dark, when visibility drops.

• Bert Kouns Industrial Loop. This high-speed arterial connects I-49 to I-20 along the southern edge of Shreveport. It functions as a de facto highway with at-grade signalized intersections, so a pedestrian crossing encounters vehicles traveling at highway speeds with limited stopping distance.

• Interstate 20 and Interstate 49 frontage and service roads. Pedestrians are not permitted on the interstates themselves, but the frontage roads and crossings near on- and off-ramps mix highway-speed traffic transitioning to surface streets, a combination that catches drivers off guard and leaves little margin for a person on foot.

Traffic engineering reports, signal timing logs, lighting and maintenance records, and prior crash history at a location can be obtained through public records requests and used as evidence. When a roadway condition contributed to the collision, that record can also support a claim against the government entity responsible for the road.

Common Pedestrian Accident Injuries

Pedestrian injuries skew toward the severe end of personal injury law because the body absorbs the full force of the impact with no structural protection. The type and severity of the injury is the single largest factor in what a case is worth. That is not a legal opinion. It is an economic reality that drives how insurers evaluate claims and how juries award damages.

Some injuries are obvious at the scene. A broken femur or a deep laceration gets immediate attention from paramedics. Other injuries do not announce themselves right away. Symptoms from brain injuries, internal bleeding, and spinal damage can take hours or days to appear, and in a pedestrian who was knocked to the pavement, more than one of these often occurs at once.

That gap between the accident and the onset of symptoms creates a real problem for the claim. If you do not connect those symptoms to the collision through medical documentation, an insurer will argue the injury came from something else. This is one of the reasons many people who do not seek legal advice after an accident end up losing recoverable compensation.

Louisiana’s prescriptive period for most pedestrian accident claims is two years from the date of the accident under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1 (effective July 1, 2024). A prescriptive period is Louisiana’s version of a filing deadline. Building a case around a serious injury requires medical records, expert evaluations, and evidence preservation, all of which should start immediately. Because pedestrian injuries are often catastrophic, these cases overlap with catastrophic injury claims, where the severity and duration of treatment drive the damages.

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  Traumatic Brain Injuries When a pedestrian’s head strikes the vehicle or the pavement, the brain can be injured with or without a skull fracture. Delayed symptoms are common. Neuropsychological testing produces measurable data insurers cannot dismiss as subjective.

  A traumatic brain injury can result from the head striking the hood, windshield, or roadway, or from the brain moving inside the skull on impact. TBIs range from concussion to permanent cognitive impairment. Delayed symptoms, including confusion, memory problems, and light sensitivity, are common and frequently missed in initial triage. Neuropsychological testing produces standardized, measurable data that documents the full scope of the injury and translates it into economic damages.

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

  Spinal cord injuries result from compression, severing, or swelling after a pedestrian is struck and thrown. Complete injuries produce no function below the damage point. Incomplete injuries allow partial movement or sensation. Lifetime care, including home modifications, accessible vehicles, attendant care, and physical therapy, together with lost earning capacity, makes these cases among the highest-value in personal injury law. They require expert witnesses who can calculate future medical costs with credibility a jury will accept.

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  Fractures and Crush Injuries Pedestrian impacts commonly fracture the legs, pelvis, and ribs. Surgical fractures require plates, screws, or rods and months of recovery. Economic impact varies sharply by occupation.

  A vehicle striking a pedestrian frequently fractures the legs, pelvis, hips, ribs, and arms, and can cause crush injuries where the limb is pinned. Surgical fractures require implantation of plates, screws, or rods and recovery measured in months. Complications like nonunion, when bone fails to heal, mean additional surgery and substantially higher medical costs. Economic impact depends on occupation: a desk worker with a broken wrist is out for weeks, while a manual laborer with a fractured pelvis is out for months.

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  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.

  Internal injuries, meaning organ damage or internal bleeding, produce no external symptoms at the scene. Adrenaline masks pain while swelling and bleeding develop gradually beneath the surface. A ruptured spleen or lacerated liver is life-threatening within hours. By the time symptoms become obvious, the situation can be critical. This is the strongest reason to accept a full medical evaluation after being struck, even if you feel relatively normal. Gaps in treatment become ammunition for insurers arguing your injuries are not connected to the crash.

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  Soft Tissue, Nerve, and Disc Injuries No fracture on the X-ray does not mean a minor injury. Herniated discs and nerve damage cause radiating pain that can require surgery. Louisiana law entitles you to compensation for aggravation of a prior condition.

  Beyond fractures, a pedestrian thrown to the ground sustains ligament tears, muscle damage, and disc injuries. A herniated disc occurs when the outer spinal disc layer tears and inner material presses on nearby nerves, causing pain, numbness, and weakness that radiates into the arms or legs. Insurers predictably argue that no fracture means a minor injury. Louisiana law does not bar recovery for aggravation of a pre-existing condition, but you need medical records that clearly document the before-and-after state.

The most severe pedestrian injuries are the ones the region’s Level I trauma center at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport is equipped to handle, and Willis-Knighton Health System also treats serious trauma across the metro. Documenting your injuries thoroughly is only part of the challenge. You also have to prove the driver caused them. The next section explains how fault is established in a pedestrian case and what a thorough investigation requires.

Representative Results

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$409 Million Wrongful Death

A tragic case where an impaired driver of a commercial vehicle ran a red light, then collided with our client, causing serious bodily injury to the mother and the loss of life of her daughter.

$49 Million Motor 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.

$32.2 Million Industrial / Workplace

Failure to maintain proper safety protocols led to an explosion at an industrial plant causing a series of catastrophic injuries from broken bones, burns, spinal injury, and mental anguish.

$31.5 Million Industrial / Workplace

Brain and spinal injuries followed an oil-field company failing to maintain equipment and provide a safe work site.

$17.2 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

Client was struck head-on by a disconnected load of an 18-wheeler that crossed the median causing broken bones and amputation.

$13 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

On the interstate, an 18-wheeler failed to yield right of way then made an unsafe lane change causing the accident which resulted in major bone breaks, damaged organs, and ultimately a leg amputation.

$12.1 Million Motor 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 Million Motor Vehicle Accident

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

$7 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

An 18-wheeler cut across traffic on an illegal left turn and hit our client, who suffered neck and back injuries.

$6.2 Million Motor 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.

$5 Million Wrongful Death

A hydraulic line exploded at a job site, taking the life of our client's loved one.

$4 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

Our client's vehicle was struck by the at-fault vehicle, resulting in neck and back injuries.

$3.2 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

While our client was stopped, the at-fault driver rear-ended our client's vehicle and set it on fire, leaving our client seriously hurt.

$3.1 Million Wrongful Death

An 18-wheeler caused a fatal collision that took the life of our client's loved one.

$3 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

A commercial vehicle struck and killed our client's loved one, who was on foot.

$3 Million Motor Vehicle Accident

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

$2.9 Million Motor Vehicle Accident

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

$2.8 Million Commercial Vehicle Accident

On the highway, an unsecured load came off an 18-wheeler and struck our client's vehicle, causing orthopedic injuries.

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

Proving Fault in a Pedestrian Accident

Winning a pedestrian accident claim in Louisiana requires more than telling your side of the story. You need evidence that proves the driver was negligent. Negligence is a legal concept with four required elements, and the case fails if any one of them is missing.

The four elements of negligence are duty of care, breach, causation, and damages. Every driver in Shreveport owes a duty of care to pedestrians, which includes keeping a proper lookout, yielding where required, and operating at a safe speed for conditions. The 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 violated that duty: failing to yield in a crosswalk, speeding, running a signal, or failing to see a pedestrian a careful driver would have seen. Causation connects the breach to your specific injuries. Damages means actual, documented losses. Without real losses, there is no claim to bring.

Pedestrian cases turn on two recurring battlegrounds: the crosswalk and the comparative 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 fault dispute. A pedestrian in a marked crosswalk with the signal generally has a strong right-of-way argument. A pedestrian crossing mid-block or against a signal faces a jaywalking argument, but crossing outside a crosswalk is not an absolute defense. The driver still owed a duty to keep a proper lookout and to avoid a foreseeable hazard. The fault each party bears is allocated by the jury.

Louisiana’s comparative fault system makes that allocation decisive. Under La. C.C. Art. 2323, as amended by Act No. 15 of 2025, a plaintiff assigned 51% or more of the fault recovers nothing. This rule takes effect January 1, 2026. Before this change, Louisiana used a pure comparative fault system where a plaintiff could recover something even at 99% fault. The new 51% bar means the driver’s insurer has a strong incentive to push as much blame onto the pedestrian as possible. In a jaywalking case, that incentive is at its sharpest.

There is another change that matters here. In 2025, Act No. 459 eliminated the Housley presumption for civil tort cases. The Housley presumption was a legal shortcut: if you were healthy before a crash and had symptoms afterward, Louisiana courts presumed the crash caused the injuries. That presumption no longer applies. You now need expert medical testimony to establish the connection between the collision and your injuries. This makes causation harder to prove and expert witnesses more important than they were even a year ago. If you had prior injuries, insurance adjusters will argue your current symptoms are pre-existing.

What a Strong Fault Investigation Looks Like

A thorough attorney will obtain the police report, witness statements, and any available physical evidence from the scene. In a pedestrian case, the point of impact, the vehicle’s resting position, skid marks, and the location of the pedestrian’s belongings help reconstruct speed and whether the driver braked. Your attorney should secure traffic camera footage and any business surveillance footage before it is overwritten, because that footage often shows whether you were in the crosswalk and whether the vehicle slowed. Locating independent witnesses early is critical, since their accounts carry significant weight on the crosswalk question. When evidence is at risk, spoliation letters preserve it.

Evidence has a shelf life. Surveillance systems at Shreveport businesses overwrite footage on cycles as short as 48 hours. Vehicles get repaired or sent to salvage yards before their data is downloaded. Witness memories become unreliable within weeks. A thorough investigation launched within days of a crash protects the evidence that protects the claim. Waiting months to get legal advice risks losing evidence that cannot be recreated.

When liability is disputed, your attorney should hire accident reconstruction experts. These specialists use physical evidence, vehicle damage patterns, and skid marks to determine vehicle speed and how the collision happened, which is central in a pedestrian case where speed governs both fault and injury severity. Modern vehicles contain an Event Data Recorder, sometimes called a black box, that records speed, braking, and steering input in the seconds before a crash. That data is objective and difficult for the other side to dispute. Your attorney should also subpoena cell phone records when driver distraction is suspected, because a timestamped text sent seconds before impact is strong evidence of breach.

Identifying All Liable Parties

The driver is not always the only party responsible. Liability is a legal term meaning legal responsibility for causing harm, and Louisiana law allows claims against every party whose negligence contributed to the collision. Identifying all liable parties affects both the total insurance coverage available and how fault percentages are allocated under comparative fault.

If the driver was working at the time, their employer can be held liable under a doctrine called respondeat superior (La. C.C. Art. 2320). This Latin term means “let the master answer.” It holds employers responsible for employee actions within the scope of employment, which often opens access to larger commercial insurance policies. Delivery drivers, sales representatives, and commercial vehicle operators fall into this category.

Government entities responsible for road design and maintenance can bear fault in pedestrian cases more often than in ordinary crashes, because so many pedestrian collisions involve a missing or faded crosswalk, a malfunctioning pedestrian signal, inadequate lighting, or a dangerous intersection design. Claims against Louisiana government entities are governed by the Louisiana Governmental Claims Act, La. R.S. 13:5101, and carry shorter deadlines than standard injury claims, including a 90-day notice requirement under La. R.S. 13:5107 before suit and the notice provisions of La. R.S. 13:5106. Missing a government notice deadline can eliminate that portion of your claim entirely, even when the road or crossing defect clearly contributed to the collision. Confirm the exact deadlines with an attorney immediately.

Identifying who is responsible is only part of the picture. Louisiana’s specific laws, many of which have changed in the past two years, determine how those liability findings translate into a recovery. The next section walks through the statutes and recent reforms that shape every pedestrian accident claim in this state.

Your Shreveport Injury Attorneys

Founding partners Trey Morris and Justin Dewett lead every Shreveport injury case Morris & Dewett takes.

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  Trey Morris

  Founding Partner

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  Justin Dewett

  Founding Partner

Louisiana Laws That Affect Your Pedestrian Claim

Louisiana is the only state whose legal system is built on French and Spanish civil law traditions rather than English common law. This is not a historical footnote. It means the rules governing your pedestrian accident claim look different from what you would find in Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi. Terms are different, deadlines are different, and strategies that work across the border can fail here.

If your case goes to court in Caddo Parish, it will be filed in the First Judicial District Court at 501 Texas Street in Shreveport, the venue a Shreveport injury attorney handles under that court’s local rules.

Comparative Fault and the Crosswalk Question

Comparative fault is the legal framework courts use to divide responsibility among everyone involved in an accident. Instead of one party being entirely at fault, each person is assigned a fault percentage, and your compensation is reduced by whatever percentage of fault is assigned to you. If your total damages are $200,000 and you are assigned 25% fault, you recover $150,000; at 40% fault, that drops to $120,000.

Under the current version of La. C.C. Art. 2323, Louisiana follows a pure comparative fault system, which means you can recover damages even if you are assigned 99% of the fault, collecting 1% of your damages. That rule is about to change. Act No. 15 of 2025 amends 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 recovers nothing.

In pedestrian cases this change lands hard. The driver’s insurer will argue you crossed outside a crosswalk, crossed against a signal, stepped into the road without looking, or were distracted. Each of these is a fault argument, and with the 51% bar approaching, an insurer that can push your share to 51% eliminates the entire claim rather than reducing it. None of these arguments is automatically decisive. Crossing outside a crosswalk is a 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 concept from Louisiana’s civil code that extinguishes your legal right to bring a claim after a set period. Once it runs, your 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, as established by Act No. 423 of 2024, effective July 1, 2024. Before this change, Louisiana imposed a one-year deadline under La. C.C. Art. 3492, which was among the shortest in the country. Two years is an improvement, but it is still shorter than the three-year or longer deadlines found in many other states.

Limited exceptions can suspend or extend prescription. If the injured person is a minor, prescription does not begin to run until they reach the age of majority, which matters in pedestrian cases because children are frequently the ones struck. The discovery rule applies when an injury is latent, and the doctrine of contra non valentem suspends prescription when the injured party had no reasonable way of knowing about the injury or the identity of the responsible party. These exceptions are narrow and depend entirely on the specific facts. You can review the full breakdown of Louisiana’s prescriptive periods for personal injury claims to understand how deadlines apply to different case types.

Government Claims and Their Shorter Deadlines

Because so many pedestrian collisions involve a crossing, a signal, or a roadway defect, claims against a government entity arise more often than in ordinary crashes. These claims are governed by 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. The notice rules in La. R.S. 13:5106 also govern these claims. If a dangerous road condition, an inoperative pedestrian signal, or a missing crosswalk contributed to your collision, the entity responsible for maintaining it shares liability when the defect contributed to the accident, but only if the notice deadline is met. Missing it can eliminate that portion of your claim entirely.

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 scenario is different: the driver who struck you has no insurance, too little, or fled. Your own auto policy’s uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage can apply even though you were on foot, because UM coverage follows the insured person. Louisiana law requires every auto insurer to offer UM coverage, though it can be waived in writing. In a hit-and-run, Louisiana treats the unidentified driver as an uninsured motorist, so report the hit-and-run to law enforcement promptly to preserve that claim. Pull the declarations page for every auto policy in your household before concluding there is no recovery, and confirm in writing whether UM coverage was accepted or rejected and at what limits. An attorney handling uninsured motorist claims in Shreveport can explain how this coverage applies to your facts.

Changes to Direct Action

Louisiana has historically allowed injured people 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: juries saw the insurer’s name and knew a corporation, not an individual, would pay any judgment.

Act No. 460 of 2025 eliminates this 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. The change eliminates that dynamic and reduces settlement pressure. This is one of several recent Louisiana tort reform changes that alter pedestrian-case strategy.

These legal rules determine what your claim can be worth in theory. The next section breaks down the specific categories of compensation Louisiana law allows.

What Compensation Does Louisiana Law Allow After a Pedestrian Accident?

Louisiana divides pedestrian accident damages into two broad categories: economic and non-economic. Economic damages cover financial losses you can calculate with receipts, pay stubs, and bills. Non-economic damages cover losses that do not come with a price tag, like pain and the ways an injury changes your daily life. There is no statutory cap on damages in general personal injury cases in Louisiana.

What your case is actually worth depends on factors specific to your situation: injury severity, fault allocation under Louisiana’s comparative fault rules, the available insurance coverage, and the quality of your evidence. No two cases produce the same number, and any attorney who quotes a figure before reviewing your medical records and the facts is guessing. You can read more about how settlements take shape in our guide to average personal injury settlements in Louisiana.

Economic Damages

Financial losses you can attach a dollar amount to, calculated from documentation: bills, records, receipts, and expert projections.

1. Past and future medical.

   Emergency care, surgery, imaging, prescriptions, and projected future treatment costs, including long-term care. In catastrophic pedestrian injuries, the future-care projection is often the largest single component.

2. Lost wages.

   Income lost during recovery. Applies to hourly, salaried, and self-employed workers. Documented with pay stubs and tax returns.

3. Diminished earning capacity.

   When injuries permanently reduce your ability to earn. Vocational and economic experts quantify the gap between pre- and post-accident earning potential.

4. Rehabilitation.

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

5. Out-of-pocket costs.

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

Non-Economic Damages

The human cost of an injury. There is no cap on these damages in general Louisiana personal injury cases.

1. Pain and suffering.

   Physical pain from impact through recovery, including chronic pain that persists long-term. Courts consider type, intensity, and duration.

2. Mental anguish.

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

3. Loss of enjoyment.

   Inability to play with your children, pursue hobbies, or do activities you did before the accident.

4. Scarring and disfigurement.

   Visible scars or permanent physical changes, which are common in pedestrian impacts. Courts weigh location, visibility, age, and psychological impact.

5. Loss of consortium.

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

6. Permanent disability.

   A permanent limp, chronic nerve pain, or inability to return to your prior career. Non-economic value increases substantially with permanence.

Egregious driver conduct can also affect value. A driver who was intoxicated, fleeing, or driving recklessly introduces conduct that, in rare cases, can support punitive damages under La. C.C. Art. 2315.4. The collateral source rule also changed under Act No. 432 of 2024, which can affect how much of your medical expense the jury sees.

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  I want to personally thank Sarah for her kindness.

  LLydell ScottCovington Office · Jun. 18, 2026

Reviews reflect individual client experiences. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

How Your Pedestrian Case Moves Forward

A pedestrian accident claim in Shreveport does not follow one straight line. Every case has phases, and each phase has its own timeline and potential problems.

Many people delay talking to an attorney after an accident because they do not understand how the process works. In a pedestrian case, that hesitation costs evidence on the central crosswalk and speed questions.

The Investigation Phase

Your attorney’s first job is to build a factual record. This starts with the police report from the Shreveport Police Department or the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, depending on where the collision happened, which contains the responding officer’s observations, witness names, and sometimes a preliminary fault assessment. But the report is a starting point, not the whole story. Your attorney should also collect surveillance footage from nearby businesses, download data from 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 capture 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 are part of this phase too. Under Louisiana’s recent tort reform, the Housley presumption has been eliminated for civil tort cases by Act No. 459 of 2025, so you now need expert medical testimony to establish causation. This makes early, thorough medical documentation more important than it has ever been.

Filing the Insurance Claim

Once your attorney has gathered initial evidence, they submit a demand to the driver’s insurance carrier, including your medical records, bills, proof of lost income, and a detailed account of how the collision happened. The insurer assigns an adjuster who reviews everything and responds with an offer or a denial. Adjusters in Louisiana are trained to look for ways to reduce what they pay, and in pedestrian cases the most common tactic is arguing you share fault for stepping into the road. This matters because Louisiana uses comparative fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323. For accidents on or after January 1, 2026, Act No. 15 of 2025 imposes the 51% bar: if you are assigned 51% or more of the fault, you recover nothing. When an adjuster argues your fault percentage, your attorney should have a documented strategy for pushing back.

Filing a Lawsuit

Not every case settles during the insurance phase. If the insurer will not offer a fair amount, your attorney files a petition in the First Judicial District Court for Caddo Parish. Filing a lawsuit does not mean you are going to trial. It means you are using the court system to force the insurer to take the claim seriously. Louisiana gives you two years from the date of the accident to file suit under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1, as amended by Act No. 423 of 2024. Miss it, and the court dismisses the case permanently. Another change worth knowing: Act No. 460 of 2025 prohibits naming the driver’s insurance company in your lawsuit 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 filing suit, both sides enter discovery, the formal process where each side exchanges evidence, takes depositions, and requests documents. Depositions are recorded, sworn interviews where attorneys question witnesses under oath. In Caddo Parish, this phase typically runs several months, depending on court scheduling and injury complexity. Most cases go through mediation before trial, a structured negotiation with a neutral third party, and most cases that reach mediation settle. If mediation does not resolve the case, a jury in Caddo Parish hears the evidence and decides both fault and damages.

Realistic Timelines

A straightforward pedestrian case with clear liability and resolved injuries can settle in several months. A case involving a traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury, where future care must be projected before the claim can be valued, can run eighteen months to three years or longer. Your attorney must wait until your doctors can give a clear prognosis before valuing the claim, because settling before treatment is complete leaves money on the table. There is no shortcut that produces both speed and a fair result. Any experienced injury attorney in Shreveport will tell you that rushing a case with unresolved medical treatment undervalues it, and whether your attorney has tried cases in Caddo Parish affects every stage of your claim, including knowing when it is ready to settle.