Art. 80.Action Involving Immovable Property

"Immovable property" is Louisiana's civil-law term for what most other states call real estate or real property — land and things permanently attached to it — as distinguished from "movable property," the civil-law term for personal property that can be relocated. This vocabulary traces back to Louisiana's French and Spanish legal roots rather than the common-law real property and personal property split used elsewhere.

Article 80(A) covers three kinds of actions involving immovable property, each of which may be brought in the parish where the property is located or in the parish of the defendant's domicile: an action asserting an interest or right in, to, or against immovable property; an action to partition immovable property, except where Articles 81, 82, or 83 supply a different rule for successions, community property, or partnership property; and an action for breach of a lease of immovable property, including enforcing a lessor's privilege or collecting rent, with this venue option available in addition to any other venue the law provides for such a claim.

Subsections B through D add refinements. If a single tract of immovable property spans more than one parish, suit may be brought in any of them. A sheriff acting after judgment must act through the sheriff of the parish where the property sits, or, for multi-parish property, through the sheriff of any parish holding a portion of it. And an action to revoke a donation of immovable property belongs in the parish where the property is located — again, any one of several parishes if the property spans more than one — with a notice of pendency required to be filed once that action starts, alerting anyone dealing with the property that its ownership is in dispute.