Art. 1061.Actions Pleaded In Reconventional Demand; Compulsory

A reconventional demand is Louisiana's term for what other states call a counterclaim: the defendant's own claim against the plaintiff, litigated inside the plaintiff's own suit rather than as a separate lawsuit. Article 1061 sets out two distinct rules depending on where the defendant's claim comes from.

Subsection A covers permissive reconventional demands. A defendant can bring any cause of action against the plaintiff — even one with nothing to do with the plaintiff's suit, even if both parties live in the same parish — as a reconventional demand. Louisiana doesn't require the claims to be connected before letting the defendant raise them together.

Subsection B goes further and makes some reconventional demands mandatory. With a few statutory exceptions — including the situation addressed in Article 3657, certain divorce actions under Civil Code Articles 102 and 103, and an action identified in Civil Code Article 186 — a defendant must assert in a reconventional demand every claim against the plaintiff that arises out of the same transaction or occurrence as the principal demand. Skip it, and Article 1037 generally bars raising it in a later, separate suit.

The line Louisiana draws is the transaction-or-occurrence test: does the defendant's claim grow out of the same set of events as the plaintiff's claim? If so, it has to come out now, in this suit. If not, the defendant can raise it now, later, or never, entirely as a matter of choice.