S.D. Codified Laws § 21-3-3

Presumed damages for wrongful conversion of personal property--Presumptions conclusive when possession wrongful from beginning

Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case Ward v. Lange (1996)

Most recently applied in Estate of Ducheneaux v. Ducheneaux (In Re Estate of Ducheneaux) (March 2018)

Source: CivC 1877, §§ 1970, 1971; SL 1885, ch 42, § 1; CL 1887, §§ 4603, 4604; RCivC 1903, §§ 2315, 2316; RC 1919, §§ 1987, 1988; SDC 1939 & Supp 1960, § 37.1910.

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

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.

The detriment caused by the wrongful conversion of personal property is presumed to be:

(1) The value of the property at the time of the conversion, with the interest from that time;

(2) Where the action has been prosecuted with reasonable diligence, the highest market value of the property at any time between the conversion and the verdict, without interest, at the option of the injured party;

(3) A fair compensation for the time and money properly expended in pursuit of the property.

Such presumptions cannot be repelled in favor of one whose possession was wrongful from the beginning by his subsequent application of the property to the benefit of the owner, without his consent.

Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.