Art. 1914.Interlocutory Judgments; Notice; Delay For Further Action

An interlocutory judgment is a ruling on something short of a final disposition of the case, such as a discovery dispute or a pretrial motion. Article 1914's baseline rule is efficient: when the judge rules on the record in open court, that rendition itself counts as notice to everyone present, with no separate mailing required.

Paragraph B lists the situations where more is needed. The interlocutory judgment must be reduced to writing if the court orders it, if a party asks within ten days of the ruling, if the ruling is a partial grant of judgment or an exception that Article 1915, Paragraph C, treats as interlocutory, or if the court takes the matter under advisement rather than deciding it on the spot. Whenever that happens, the clerk has to mail or deliver notice of the written judgment, and delivery in open court is documented the same way it is for a final judgment.

Paragraph C carves out a rule with real teeth for one specific ruling: denial of a new trial or of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. There, the clerk must always mail notice, whether or not the judge took the motion under advisement, and the deadline for appealing the underlying final judgment does not start running until that notice is mailed. Missing this detail can cost a party the appeal entirely, since the mailing date, not the date of the ruling, controls.

Paragraph D gives each party ten days, from notice of the interlocutory judgment or from the mailing of notice when mailing is required, to take further action or file pleadings in the trial court. That ten-day window has no effect on the separate deadlines for seeking a supervisory writ or for appealing an interlocutory judgment. Paragraph E excludes interlocutory injunctive orders from this article entirely, leaving those on their own timeline.