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S.D. Codified Laws § 61-6-14.1

Misconduct defined

Applied in 14 court decisions — leading case Phillips v. John Morrell & Co. (1992)

Most recently applied in Bankston v. New Angus, LLC (June 2023)

Source: SL 1984, ch 337; SL 1989, ch 449, § 2; SL 1992, ch 363, § 1; SL 2008, ch 277, § 122.

How often courts cite this section

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citing decisions per year

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.

As used in this chapter, misconduct is:

(1) Failure to obey orders, rules, or instructions, or failure to discharge the duties for which an individual was employed; or

(2) Substantial disregard of the employer's interests or of the employee's duties and obligations to the employer; or

(3) Conduct evincing such willful or wanton disregard of an employer's interests as is found in deliberate violations or disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of an employee; or

(4) Carelessness or negligence of such degree or recurrence as to manifest equal culpability or wrongful intent.

However, mere inefficiency, unsatisfactory conduct, failure to perform as the result of inability or incapacity, a good faith error in judgment or discretion, or conduct mandated by a religious belief which belief cannot be reasonably accommodated by the employer is not misconduct.

Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.