New Orleans Dog Bite Lawyer

Strict Liability

New Orleans does not run a municipal animal control department. The Louisiana SPCA holds a contract with the City to provide animal control services, and its Humane Law and Rescue division handles bite calls — reachable at 504-821-2222, or 911 in an emergency. It is a nonprofit contractor arrangement rather than a city agency, so investigations, quarantine and any dangerous dog process sit with the LA/SPCA and prior complaints about the same dog live in its files rather than a city system.

The date of your injury matters more in Louisiana right now than in any other state on this site. Act 423 of 2024 changed the prescriptive period from one year to two effective 1 July 2024, prospectively only — so an injury on 30 June 2024 carries a one-year deadline and one on 1 July carries two. A great deal of published Louisiana guidance still describes the old rule as current.

Louisiana's civil-law framework also shapes what evidence matters. Article 2321 conditions strict liability on the injury not resulting from your provocation of the dog, and provocation defeats the claim rather than reducing it — unusual in a state that otherwise applies pure comparative fault. Your own account of the seconds before the bite is therefore worth writing down the same day.

Report a New Orleans bite to the Louisiana SPCA's Humane Law and Rescue division at 504-821-2222, or 911 in an emergency — the LA/SPCA holds the City's animal control contract, so there is no separate municipal department. Two Louisiana points worth acting on: confirm the exact date of injury, because the prescriptive period doubled from one to two years on 1 July 2024 and applies prospectively only; and record what happened immediately before the bite, since under Civil Code article 2321 provocation defeats strict liability rather than merely reducing the award.

Read the full statute breakdown: Louisiana Dog Bite Laws → · Typical payouts: Louisiana Settlement Amounts →