The concept of costs as an indemnity to be recovered by a prevailing party is abolished in the courts of South Dakota. Whenever the term, costs, is used, it means disbursements as defined in § 15-17-37.
S.D. Codified Laws § 15-17-36
Costs not an indemnity--Disbursements
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Matter of Estate of O'Keefe (1998)
Most recently applied in DeHaven v. Hall (July 2008)
Source: SL 1992, ch 148, § 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.