If any highway, culvert, or bridge is damaged by flood, fire or other cause, to the extent that it endangers the safety of public travel, the governing body responsible for the maintenance of such highway, culvert, or bridge, shall within forty-eight hours of receiving notice of such danger, erect guards over such defect or across such highway of sufficient height, width, and strength to guard the public from accident or injury and shall repair the damage or provide an alternative means of crossing within a reasonable time after receiving notice of the danger. The governing body shall erect a similar guard across any abandoned public highway, culvert, or bridge. Any officer who violates any of the provisions of this section commits a petty offense.
S.D. Codified Laws § 31-32-10
Governing body to place guards on damaged road--Time to erect--Abandoned road--Penalty
Applied in 19 court decisions — leading case Bland v. Davison County (1997)
Most recently applied in Estate of Sanborn v. Peterson (March 2026)
Source: SDC 1939, §§ 28.0913, 28.9910; SL 1951, ch 140; SL 1990, ch 227.
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.