Every person who has actual notice of circumstances sufficient to put a prudent man upon inquiry as to a particular fact, and who omits to make such inquiry with reasonable diligence, is deemed to have constructive notice of the fact itself.
S.D. Codified Laws § 17-1-4
Circumstances constituting constructive notice
Applied in 23 court decisions — leading case Golden v. Oahe Enterprises, Inc. (1976)
Most recently applied in Mahmoudi v. City of Spearfish (August 2025)
Source: CivC 1877, § 2109; CL 1887, § 4743; RCivC 1903, § 2452; RC 1919, § 15; SDC 1939, § 65.0504.
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.