Art. 1841.Judgments, Interlocutory and Final

Article 1841 sets the vocabulary for everything that follows in Title VI. A judgment is the court's ruling on the parties' rights in the action, and it can award any relief a party is entitled to, not only the specific relief that party asked for by name. From there the article splits every judgment into two families. An interlocutory judgment resolves a preliminary matter along the way -- a ruling on an exception, a discovery dispute, a request for a continuance -- without touching the merits of the case. A final judgment decides the merits, and it counts as final even if it resolves only part of the dispute rather than the whole case.

The line between the two matters because a Louisiana judgment's practical consequences turn on which side of it falls. Parties, lawyers, and courts all rely on this two-category system to know whether a ruling ends a piece of the litigation or merely clears a path toward that end. A discovery order might frustrate a party for weeks, but it stays interlocutory because it never reaches whether that party wins or loses on the underlying claim.

Article 1841 does not itself say which judgments can be appealed or when -- it only supplies the labels. The rest of Title VI, including the articles on default judgments, dismissals, and declaratory relief, builds on this foundation by explaining how particular kinds of judgments fit into the interlocutory-final framework.