Art. 4845.Amount In Dispute; Jurisdiction of Incidental Demands; Parish, City, and Justice of the Peace Courts; Payment of Costs of Transfer

An incidental demand is a claim that rides along with a lawsuit rather than starting one, a reconventional demand answering the plaintiff's claim, a third-party demand bringing in someone new, or a similar claim tied to the same case. Article 4845 addresses what happens when that incidental claim, on its own, would exceed the amount a parish, city, or justice of the peace court could otherwise hear.

For parish and city courts, the rule favors keeping the case together. Once the court has jurisdiction over the principal demand, it can also hear an incidental demand growing out of the same transaction or occurrence without regard to that incidental demand's own dollar value. A justice of the peace court gets a narrower version of the same idea: it can hear a good-faith incidental demand alongside the principal one, but only up to its own jurisdictional ceiling; once an incidental demand exceeds that ceiling, the justice of the peace court cannot keep any part of the case and must transfer the whole action.

Article 4845 also addresses a compulsory reconventional demand, one the defendant must raise now or lose permanently, that exceeds a parish or city court's jurisdiction: the court transfers the entire action, not merely the reconventional demand. And where a justice of the peace court's transfer is triggered by an incidental demand, the article puts the transfer costs on the party who filed it, requiring payment to the transferee court's clerk within fifteen days of filing.