Art. 1810.Directed Verdicts

A directed verdict takes an issue away from the jury because the evidence presented so far does not support a reasonable finding for the opposing party. Article 1810 lets a party move for one at the close of the evidence its opponent has offered. If the court denies the motion, the moving party is not stuck — it can still put on its own evidence, to the same extent as if it had never made the motion at all, and it did not need to have reserved that right in advance.

The article also protects the jury trial itself from being read as abandoned. A motion for a directed verdict that the court does not grant is not treated as a waiver of trial by jury, even when every party in the case has moved for one. Any motion that is made, though, has to say something specific: Article 1810 requires the motion to state the specific grounds it rests on, rather than a bare request. And when the court does grant a directed verdict, its order takes effect without needing the jury's assent — the jury has no say in whether the court's ruling stands.

Louisiana kept the term "directed verdict" for this device even after federal courts moved away from it. The federal rules used the same label until a 1991 amendment renamed the device "judgment as a matter of law." A reader coming from federal practice or a state that adopted the newer term should not read anything substantive into Louisiana's older name — it describes the same basic ruling by a different name.