If, after an injury has been sustained, the employee as a result thereof becomes partially incapacitated from pursuing the employee's usual and customary line of employment, or if the employee has been released by the employee's physician from temporary total disability and has not been given a rating to which § 62-4-6 would apply, the employee shall receive compensation, subject to the limitations as to maximum amounts fixed in § 62-4-3, equal to one-half of the difference between the average amount which the employee earned before the accident, and the average amount which the employee is earning or is able to earn in some suitable employment or business after the accident. If the employee has not received a bona fide job offer that the employee is physically capable of performing, compensation shall be at the rate provided by § 62-4-3. However, in no event may the total calculation be less than the amount the claimant was receiving for temporary total disability, unless the claimant refuses suitable employment.
S.D. Codified Laws § 62-4-5
Compensation for partial disability
Applied in 8 court decisions — leading case Caldwell v. John Morrell & Co. (1992)
Most recently applied in Petition for Declaratory Ruling (March 2016)
Source: SDC 1939, § 64.0403 (3); SL 1963, ch 460, § 2; SL 1969, ch 286; SL 1971, ch 282; SL 1978, ch 370, § 7; SL 1993, ch 379, § 2; SL 1995, ch 296, § 8; SL 1999, ch 261, § 5.
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.