Art. 1951.Amendment of Judgment

Once a court signs a final judgment, the case is not entirely closed to the court's own pen. Article 1951 gives a judge a narrow tool for cleaning up a judgment after the fact: fixing the phrasing, correcting a defect in the decretal language (the operative part of the judgment that states who wins and what they get), or correcting an error in calculation. None of that touches the substance of what the court decided — it only makes the written judgment say clearly and correctly what the court already ruled.

Either the court on its own or any party can raise the request, and there is no deadline for doing so. But Article 1951 insists on process before a judge signs an amended judgment: the parties must get notice and a hearing. That requirement relaxes in two situations — when every party consents to the amendment, or when the court or the party proposing the amendment certifies that it went out to everyone at least five days beforehand and drew no objection. Either way, the other side gets a real chance to weigh in before the judgment changes.

The line Article 1951 draws matters because a judgment amendment is much easier to obtain than a new trial or an action of nullity. A court cannot use Article 1951 to award more or less than it originally awarded, add a claim it never ruled on, or otherwise rethink the merits. A party looking for that kind of change has to turn to a new trial under Article 1971 or, once the ordinary deadlines have passed, an action of nullity under Article 2001.