In every action for wrongful death the jury may give such damages as they may think proportionate to the pecuniary injury resulting from such death to the persons respectively for whose benefit such action shall be brought.
S.D. Codified Laws § 21-5-7
Damages proportionate to pecuniary injury to beneficiaries
Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case Sander v. Geib, Elston, Frost Professional Ass'n (1993)
Most recently applied in Wilcox v. VERMEULEN (March 2010)
Source: SL 1909, ch 301, § 3; RC 1919, § 2931; SDC 1939, § 37.2203; SL 1947, ch 173; SL 1951, ch 193; SL 1957, ch 194; SL 1963, ch 235; SL 1967, ch 149.
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.