Every provision in a contract restricting a party from enforcing his rights under it by usual legal proceedings in ordinary tribunals, or limiting his time to do so, is void. However, agreements to submit controversies to arbitration, as authorized by the Uniform Arbitration Act, are valid and enforceable, and any provision in a surety contract which limits the time for enforcement is valid and enforceable if the limitation of time is not less than two years after the cause of action has accrued.
S.D. Codified Laws § 53-9-6
Restraints on legal proceedings void--Arbitration agreements and certain surety contract limitations enforceable
Applied in 14 court decisions — leading case Kobbeman v. Oleson (1998)
Most recently applied in First Dakota National Bank v. BancInsure, Inc. (July 2014)
Source: CivC 1877, § 958; CL 1887, § 3582; RCivC 1903, § 1276; RC 1919, § 897; SDC 1939, § 10.0705; SL 1971, ch 157, § 27; SL 1988, ch 382, § 1.
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.