Art. 2165.Appeals Deemed Abandoned

Article 2165 supplies the definition that Article 2162 relies on when it lists abandonment as a ground for dismissing an appeal. An appeal is abandoned when the parties fail to take any step in its prosecution or disposition for the period of inactivity the appellate court's own rules establish. The Code does not fix that period itself; each appellate court sets it through its own procedural rules, so the length of inactivity that triggers abandonment can differ from one court to the next.

It helps to keep this concept separate from a similarly named one from earlier in Louisiana civil procedure. Article 561 lets a trial court deem an entire lawsuit abandoned, ending the action itself, when no party takes a formal step in its prosecution for three years. Article 2165 operates only after a case has already left the trial court on appeal, and it does not touch the underlying judgment or claims; it ends the appeal, not the lawsuit that produced the judgment being appealed.

Because the triggering period comes from each appellate court's rules rather than a single statewide number, a party monitoring a pending Louisiana appeal should check the specific rules of the court where the appeal is docketed rather than assume a fixed timetable from the Code itself.