Art. 1734.1.Cash Deposit; Procedure

Article 1734.1 gives the trial court an alternative to the surety bond in Article 1734: an actual cash deposit held by the clerk of court. The court estimates a specific dollar amount to cover jury costs — juror fees and expenses, and the charges of the jury commission, clerk, and sheriff — and fixes a deadline for making the deposit that cannot be later than thirty days before trial. The statute caps how large that deposit can be: no more than five thousand dollars for the trial's first day, plus up to one thousand dollars for each additional day the court expects the trial to run. As with the bond deadline in Article 1734, missing the deposit deadline gives other parties an additional ten days, and missing it altogether waives the jury trial.

The article carves out one exception to the whole deposit requirement: a party who has been granted permission to litigate without prepaying costs or posting security — Louisiana's in forma pauperis procedure — does not have to make the deposit at all to get a jury.

The remaining paragraphs handle the money once it is on deposit. The clerk can pay jury costs out of the deposit as they accrue, keeping a record of what has been disbursed, and the court can order an additional deposit mid-trial if the original amount runs short. Whatever is paid out from the deposit for jury costs counts as court costs in the case. Once all the jury costs are paid, any money left over goes back to the party or attorney who made the deposit.