In any case of hospitalization of a medically indigent person, the county, through any elected officer or through an employee, may arrange for adequate and suitable care of the person elsewhere. If the county notifies the hospital in writing of its arrangement for the removal of the medically indigent person and the hospital unreasonably fails or refuses to cooperate in effecting the change, the county is not liable for any hospitalization subsequent to the hospital's failure or refusal to cooperate.
S.D. Codified Laws § 28-13-35
Substitute arrangements for hospitalized indigent patient--County not liable to hospital after failure to cooperate
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case In Re the Appeal of Presentation Sisters, Inc. (1991)
Most recently applied in Prairie Lakes Health Care Systems (August 1998)
Source: SL 1953, ch 131, § 4; SDC Supp 1960, § 27.12B04; SL 1997, ch 170, § 18.
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.