HB90, dealing with Governor Blanco’s emergency orders suspending prescription, peremption, and legal deadlines, awaits final Senate passage. The Senate Judiciary A Committee adopted amendments which have not yet been incorporated into the latest version of the bill, but which should ultimately be included.

You can (and should) read the bill in its entirety here, together with the amendments by Senate Judiciary Committee A here.

Noteworthy aspects of the bill follow:

— 9:2552(A) provides for a limited suspension and/or extension of “all prescriptions, including liberative, acquisitive, and the prescription of nonuse, and all peremptive periods…during the time period of August 26, 2005, through January 3, 2006….” The suspension applies only if “these periods would have otherwise lapsed” during this time period. This phrase, prior to amendment by Judiciary Committee A, read “…would have otherwise accrued or lapsed.”

— 9:2553(A) provides for a “limited suspension and/or extension,” from November 25, 2005 through January 3, 2006, of “all deadlines in legal proceedings which were suspended by Executive Orders KBB 2005-32, 48, and 67,” and which would have “otherwise lapsed” during that time period.

— 9:2553(B) provides for a motion to seek extension of a legal deadline which was not suspended by executive order and which “accrued or lapsed” at some point between October 25, 2005 and November 25, 2005.

— Under 9:2554(B), notwithstanding 9:2552 or 9:2553, certain categories of parties are afforded the opportunity, until June 1, 2006, to get a 30-day extension of prescription or peremption periods, or legal deadlines, if they can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that “the motion was filed at the earliest time practicable and but for the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina or Rita, the legal deadline would have been timely met.” However, no such order can extend a deadline beyond June 1, 2006.

These parties include:
a) parties domiciled within the jurisdiction of a district court or justice of the peace court in Cameron, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, or Vermilion Parishes;
b) parties whose cause of action arose within any of these parishes; or
c) parties whose attorney is domiciled in or has a law office within the jurisdiction of these courts.

— 9:2555 states that 9:2552 through 9:2554 “shall not apply to landlord-tenant disputes, evictions proceedings, and lease disputes regarding immovable property,” if those proceedings comply with the Executive Order 67 – which, in turn, incorporates the Supreme Court’s October 3, 2005 temporary rule. You do remember the Supreme Court’s October 3, 2005 temporary rule? If not, you can read it here.

— 9:2552(B) states that the act shall not apply to “the prescription of nonuse applicable to mineral servitudes, mineral royalty interests, and executive rights,” which “shall be governed by the Louisiana Mineral Code….”

— Finally, Section 2 of HB90 declares the Act to be “interpretative, curative, and procedural and therefore is to be applied retroactively as well as prospectively.”