A grant is to be interpreted in favor of the grantee, except that a reservation in any grant, and every grant by a public officer or body, as such, to a private party, is to be interpreted in favor of the grantor.
S.D. Codified Laws § 43-4-16
Grantee favored in interpretation of grant--Exception
Applied in 8 court decisions — leading case Estate of Henderson v. Estate of Henderson (2012)
Most recently applied in Estate of Henderson v. Estate of Henderson (November 2012)
Source: CivC 1877, § 615; CL 1887, § 3238; RCivC 1903, § 931; RC 1919, § 533; SDC 1939, § 51.1310.
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.