A contract is to be interpreted according to the law and usage of the place where it is to be performed or, if it does not indicate a place of performance, according to the law and usage of the place where it is made.
S.D. Codified Laws § 53-1-4
Law and usage of place of performance, application to contracts
Applied in 12 court decisions — leading case O'Neill Farms, Inc. v. Reinert (2010)
Most recently applied in Payne v. State Farm (January 2022)
Source: CivC 1877, § 937; CL 1887, § 3561; RCivC 1903, § 1255; RC 1919, § 876; SDC 1939, § 10.0106.
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.