Provides relative to peremptive periods

House Bill 194 amends Louisiana Revised Statutes section 9:5607(A) to modify the peremptive period framework governing actions against design and construction professionals including engineers, surveyors, architects, interior designers, and real estate developers. The bill introduces a critical timing requirement by adding a six-month window for recording the owner's acceptance of work. Specifically, if the owner's acceptance is not recorded in the mortgage office within six months from the date the owner occupies or takes possession of the improvement, the peremptive period will begin running from the date of such occupation or possession rather than from the date of recorded acceptance. The five-year filing deadline remains unchanged, but its trigger point becomes clarified and conditioned on whether timely recordation occurs. The amendment preserves the existing peremptive periods for actions based on services not related to construction inspection.

Property owners and design professionals are most directly affected by this change. Owners who fail to record acceptance within the six-month window will find their peremptive period tied to their actual occupation date, removing ambiguity about when the clock starts. This creates both clarity and potential risk for owners, as the failure to record acceptance promptly will not extend their filing deadline but will instead anchor it to occupation. Design and construction professionals including licensed engineers, surveyors, architects, and interior designers benefit from increased certainty about when statutes of limitations expire against them. Real estate developers whose development plans have been certified by licensed professionals will also experience more predictable claims exposure.

This amendment operates within Louisiana's established statutory structure for professional liability limitations found in Title 9 of the Revised Statutes, which governs obligations and liability generally. The provision relates to professional licensing requirements defined in Title 37, which establishes the regulatory framework for engineers, architects, and interior designers. The peremptive period framework in section 9:5607 is fundamental to Louisiana's civil law approach to professional liability and represents the state's policy determination balancing protection for design professionals against property owners' rights to bring warranty and tort claims. The six-month recording window creates an administrative requirement that interfaces with Louisiana's mortgage office recording system.