Whenever the death or injury of a person, including an unborn child, shall be caused by a wrongful act, neglect, or default, and the act, neglect, or default is such as would have entitled the party injured to maintain an action and recover damages in respect thereto, if death had not ensued, then and in every such case, the corporation which, or the person who, would have been liable, if death had not ensued, or the personal representative of the estate of such person as such personal representative, shall be liable, to an action for damages, notwithstanding the death of the person injured, and although the death shall have been caused under such circumstances as amount in law to a felony; and when the action is against such personal representative, the damages recovered shall be a valid claim against the estate of such deceased person. However, an action under this section involving an unborn child shall be for the exclusive benefit of the mother or the lawfully married parents of the unborn child.
S.D. Codified Laws § 21-5-1
Liability for wrongful death where damages for injury could have been recovered--Unborn child
Applied in 13 court decisions — leading case Peterson, Ex Rel. Peterson v. Burns (2001)
Most recently applied in Lindholm v. BMW of North America, LLC (August 2016)
Source: SL 1909, ch 301, § 1; RC 1919, § 2929; SDC 1939, § 37.2201; SL 1947, ch 172; SL 1984, ch 158, § 1.
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.