The Housley Presumption protected plaintiffs for 34 years. On May 28, 2025, Louisiana eliminated it. South Carolina and Georgia followed. Here's what changed — and what it means for how you build cases now.
For 34 Years, This Legal Shortcut Protected Your Client's Injury Case. States Are Erasing It.
For more than three decades, personal injury attorneys in Louisiana — and their counterparts watching in states across the country — relied on a powerful evidentiary tool known as the Housley Presumption.
Named for the Louisiana Supreme Court's 1991 decision in Housley v. Cerise, the rule was elegant in its simplicity: if a plaintiff was in good health before an accident, developed symptoms shortly after, and no other cause was evident, the court would presume the accident caused the injury. The burden then shifted to the defense to rebut it.
For plaintiffs' attorneys, this was a cornerstone. For defense counsel, it was a wall they had to climb every time.
On May 28, 2025, that wall came down.
Under the old Housley framework, a plaintiff with no prior history of an injury who developed symptoms after an accident was presumed to have been injured by that accident. The case could often be built around temporal proximity — the timing of symptoms relative to the event.
That is no longer enough.
Under Louisiana's new Article 306.1, the same plaintiff must now present: ✔ Expert medical testimony directly linking the accident to the condition ✔ Diagnostic test results and clinical documentation from early in the treatment timeline ✔ Post-accident medical records showing a documented, continuous progression of symptoms ✔ Affirmative proof of causation — not merely the absence of a prior condition
Temporal proximity alone is no longer enough to carry the burden or defeat summary judgment. Defense counsel can now challenge causation aggressively from the very first filing. In soft-tissue cases, delayed-onset injuries, and claims where the client did not seek immediate care, the exposure gap widens significantly.
Louisiana is the most high-profile example — but it is not alone. The erosion of plaintiff-favorable causation presumptions is a national trend, playing out through different mechanisms in different states.
■ Louisiana (2025) | HB 450 / Article 306.1 — Housley Presumption formally eliminated. Effective May 28, 2025. ■ South Carolina (2025) | H. 3430 — Causation presumption eliminated as part of sweeping tort reform. Effective January 1, 2026. ■ Georgia (2025) | SB 68 — Mandates affirmative expert-supported causation proof; restricts medical damages to amounts actually paid; allows bifurcated trials. Effective April 21, 2025. ■ Arkansas (2025) | HB 1204 — Restricts phantom damages and tightens how causation-linked medical expenses are recovered. ■ Florida (2023) | HB 837 — Shifted to modified comparative fault; medical damages tied to amounts actually paid with major causation strategy implications. ■ Iowa / Montana / North Carolina | Earlier-generation reforms restricting causation-linked damage recovery — the blueprint others are now following.
Louisiana did not just eliminate the Housley Presumption in isolation. It paired that change with another major reform happening simultaneously across the country: the restriction of medical damages to amounts actually paid rather than amounts billed.
Here is the bottom line for every personal injury attorney, regardless of which state you practice in: the evidentiary safety net is gone in a growing number of jurisdictions — and where it still exists, it is under active legislative threat.
What replaces it is documentation. Specifically, the kind that cannot be reconstructed six months after the fact: ■ Dated, consistent records of symptoms appearing shortly after the incident ■ Documented functional limitations and daily life disruption in the client's own words ■ A continuous, uninterrupted timeline that makes the causal link impossible to credibly dispute ■ Real-time evidence of pain patterns, sleep disruption, activity restriction, and emotional impact
Defense counsel's new first move in a post-Housley world is to find the gaps — the weeks where your client didn't see a doctor, the periods with no recorded symptoms, the inconsistencies between what the client says now and what the record shows from then.
MyInjuryTracker was built specifically for this moment. Every weekly check-in your client completes creates a dated, time-stamped, legally defensible entry in the record. Pain levels. Sleep disruption. Activity limitations. Mood. Medication. Daily life impact. All documented in real time, in the client's own words, through a process they can actually complete.
When the defense attorney looks for gaps, they won't find them. When the expert needs a continuous symptom history to support their opinion, it's already there. When the case goes to trial and opposing counsel tries to argue that the plaintiff's complaints are recent fabrications, you have 52 weeks of contemporaneous documentation that says otherwise.
The Housley Presumption gave Louisiana plaintiffs' attorneys a procedural advantage for 34 years. That advantage is gone. Georgia and South Carolina followed. More states are watching.
The attorneys who adapt fastest will be the ones who understand that documentation is no longer just a good practice — it's the new foundation of a viable personal injury case.
The evidentiary net is gone. The documentation has to replace it.