Punctuation shall not control or affect the construction of any provision when any construction based on such punctuation would not conform to the spirit and purpose of such provision.
S.D. Codified Laws § 2-14-8
Punctuation not controlling
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case In Re the Change of Bed Category of Tieszen Memorial Home, Inc., Marion (1984)
Most recently applied in Hamen v. Hamlin Cnty. (February 2021)
Source: SDC 1939, § 65.0202 (6).
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.