Art. 1291.Service By Sheriff

Louisiana divides itself into parishes rather than counties, and each parish sheriff's office carries the job of physically handing court papers to the people involved in a lawsuit. Article 1291 opens this chapter by naming the sheriff as the default server of process, and it gives a plaintiff a choice of which sheriff to use: the one for the parish where the person being served can be found, or the one for the parish where the suit itself is pending.

The opening clause, except as otherwise provided by law, matters as much as the rule it introduces. It signals that the sheriff is not the only lawful server of process in Louisiana. Article 1293, a few sections later, lets a court appoint a private person to serve papers when the sheriff hasn't gotten the job done, and other statutes create additional exceptions for particular kinds of service, such as long-arm service on an out-of-state defendant.

For a party preparing to have a citation or other process served, Article 1291 is the starting point: absent some other rule, send the papers to a sheriff, and choose between the parish of service and the parish of the pending action based on where the logistics make more sense.