Every person is obligated to refrain from infringing upon the right of others not to be defamed.
S.D. Codified Laws § 20-11-1
Obligation to refrain from defamation
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Bego v. Gordon (1987)
Most recently applied in Harvey v. Regional Health Network (January 2018)
Source: SDC 1939, § 47.0501.
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.