If you get hurt in a crash here in Terrebonne Parish, the last thing you should have to worry about is whether your case ends up in a Houston courtroom instead of ours in Houma. But it happens more than folks realize. When the vehicle that hits you is owned by an out-of-state trucking company, that company’s lawyers will often try to move your case to their home turf — a place where the jury has never sat in Bayou Cane traffic and has no feel for what it’s like to live along these bayous. A Texas appeals court recently told a trucking company that a Louisiana crash belongs in a Louisiana court. That ruling is worth explaining, because it protects anyone who might someday be hit by a big rig with out-of-state plates.
“Forum non conveniens” is Latin for a simple idea: a court can send a case to a more appropriate location when the one it was filed in doesn’t make sense. Out-of-state trucking companies sometimes try to get a Louisiana wreck heard on their own turf, hoping for a friendlier jury pool. Courts weigh where the wreck happened, where the witnesses live, and where the injured person lives. When a collision happens on a Terrebonne Parish road, involves a Louisiana resident, and gets investigated by Louisiana troopers, the answer is usually obvious — the case belongs here. That’s exactly what a Texas appellate court decided in a recent case tied to a Terrebonne Parish wreck, ordering it dismissed from Texas so it could be refiled where it belonged. I read rulings like this closely, because they confirm what I’ve told clients for years: your case doesn’t have to be fought on someone else’s home field just because their company is headquartered elsewhere. Louisiana’s own procedural code gives our courts this same authority, spelled out in Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure Article 123.
In my thirty-plus years on Grinage Street, I’ve watched cases go both ways: moved somewhere they don’t belong, and kept right here at home. There are real, practical reasons Louisiana jurisdiction tends to favor the person who got hurt:
None of this guarantees any particular result. But it means the deck isn’t stacked against you by a forum with nothing to do with where you live or how you got hurt.
Terrebonne Parish sits at a crossroads for the oilfield service industry, agriculture, and the barge trade. Big commercial trucks, many hauling hazardous materials, are a constant presence on Highway 90, Highway 24, and the smaller roads feeding into them. Federal law strictly governs how those loads are secured, labeled, and driven, spelled out in the FMCSA’s hazardous materials regulations. When a driver hauling that kind of cargo makes an illegal turn or ignores the rules of the road, the risk to everyone else multiplies — a loaded tanker doesn’t stop, turn, or react the way a passenger car does.
I’ve watched folks get hurt on Highway 90 by drivers who weren’t paying enough attention to the size and danger of what they were hauling. Louisiana’s Department of Transportation and Development maintains and monitors these corridors, but no amount of infrastructure planning replaces a driver following the rules. When that doesn’t happen, the resulting case often involves both the driver and the trucking company, layered with equipment and cargo regulations beyond ordinary traffic law — which is exactly why it matters where, and under whose law, the case gets heard. If a commercial truck hit you, our truck accident attorneys can walk you through what that extra layer of regulation means for your claim.
What you do in the minutes after a crash can shape your case for years, long before any question of jurisdiction comes up.
Out-of-state carriers often have investigators and lawyers on a Louisiana crash scene within hours. You deserve someone in your corner just as fast — that’s the role our Houma personal injury team plays. For a broader look at how these claims work locally, our Houma personal injury lawyer page walks through the basics.
I’ve spent my career on Grinage Street because folks along Bayou Cane, Grand Caillou Road, and every stretch of Highway 90 and Highway 24 deserve a fair shake in front of people who understand this place. When an out-of-state trucking company tries to move your case somewhere else, that’s not a technicality — it’s a fight worth having, and it’s one the courts increasingly recognize belongs on our side of the state line. If you or someone you love was hurt by a commercial truck anywhere in Terrebonne, Lafourche, or St. Mary Parish, don’t wait to get answers about your rights. This page is for general information only, and no attorney-client relationship is formed by reading this page. Call our office today at (985) 851-3311 or reach out to our office online. We’re at 306 Grinage Street in Houma, and I still answer the phone myself.
