A contract provision contrary to an express provision of law or to the policy of express law, though not expressly prohibited or otherwise contrary to good morals, is unlawful.
S.D. Codified Laws § 53-9-1
Contract provisions contrary to law, unlawful
Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case Greene v. Morgan, Theeler, Cogley & Petersen (1998)
Most recently applied in Sturzenbecher v. Sioux County Ranch, LLC (April 2025)
Source: CivC 1877, § 953; CL 1887, § 3577; RCivC 1903, § 1271; RC 1919, § 892; SDC 1939, § 10.0701.
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.