An employment even for a specified term may be terminated at any time by the employer for habitual neglect of duty, continued incapacity to perform, or any willful breach of duty by the employee in the course of employment.
S.D. Codified Laws § 60-4-5
Neglect or breach of duty--Incapacity to perform
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Hopes v. Black Hills Power and Light Co. (1986)
Most recently applied in Johnson v. Kolman (September 1987)
Source: CivC 1877, § 1153; CL 1887, § 3776; RCivC 1903, § 1472; RC 1919, § 1096; SDC 1939, § 17.0404; SL 2008, ch 276, § 29.
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.