If compensation has been awarded and paid under this title and the employee has recovered damages from another person, the employer having paid the compensation may recover from the employee an amount equal to the amount of compensation paid by the employer to the employee, less the necessary and reasonable expense of collecting the same, which expenses may include an attorney's fee not in excess of thirty-five percent of compensation paid, subject to § 62-7-36.
S.D. Codified Laws § 62-4-39
Compensation paid by employer--Reimbursement from damages recovered from third party
Applied in 15 court decisions — leading case Isaac v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (1994)
Most recently applied in Estate of Jones (February 2022)
Source: SDC 1939, § 64.0301 as added by SL 1964, ch 224; SL 1994, ch 396, § 17.
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.