Art. 42.General Rules

Article 42 is the anchor of Louisiana's venue scheme — the rule every other article in this chapter either applies or displaces. It sorts defendants into categories and assigns each one a home parish for lawsuits. An individual domiciled in Louisiana gets sued where domiciled; an individual who lives in the state without being domiciled here gets sued where he resides. A domestic corporation, domestic insurer, or domestic limited liability company gets sued where its registered office sits, while a domestic partnership or unincorporated association gets sued where its principal business establishment sits.

Out-of-state entities get their own rules. A foreign corporation or foreign LLC licensed to do business in Louisiana is sued in the parish it designated as its principal business establishment when it registered to do business here, or, absent that designation, in the parish of its primary in-state place of business. A foreign corporation or LLC that never bothered to get licensed, along with a nonresident individual who never appointed an agent for service of process, can be sued in the plaintiff's own home parish, or in any parish where process can be, and is, served on the defendant. A nonresident who did appoint an agent for service gets a narrower rule: suit must go to the parish of that agent's designated post office address.

Article 42 sets the default, not the whole picture. Article 43 makes clear this general rule yields to the long list of exceptions in Articles 71 through 86 for particular kinds of actions — torts, property disputes, insurance claims, partnership suits, and more — plus any other venue rule the legislature has written elsewhere. When no exception applies, Article 42 is where a case lands.