In any claim alleging punitive or exemplary damages, before any discovery relating thereto may be commenced and before any such claim may be submitted to the finder of fact, the court shall find, after a hearing and based upon clear and convincing evidence, that there is a reasonable basis to believe that there has been willful, wanton or malicious conduct on the part of the party claimed against.
S.D. Codified Laws § 21-1-4.1
Discovery and trial of exemplary damage claims
Applied in 38 court decisions — leading case Planned Parenthood, Sioux Falls Clinic v. Miller (1995)
Most recently applied in Fiechtner v. American West Ins. (November 2025)
Source: SL 1986, ch 161.
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.