South Dakota Statute of Limitations: Filing Deadlines by Case Type

In South Dakota, most personal injury claims must be filed within 3 years under SDCL 15-2-14, written and oral contracts within 6 years under SDCL 15-2-13, and fraud claims within 6 years under SDCL 15-2-13(6). Missing these deadlines permanently bars your claim in court.

South Dakota's statute of limitations sets strict deadlines for filing both civil lawsuits and criminal charges. If you miss the deadline that applies to your case, you lose the right to bring your claim to court.

These time limits exist to protect everyone involved. They ensure that cases are decided while evidence is still fresh, witnesses are still available, and memories have not faded. Understanding which deadline applies to your situation is one of the most important steps you can take before filing a lawsuit or pursuing criminal charges in South Dakota.

This guide covers every major category of civil and criminal statute of limitations in South Dakota, with direct references to the South Dakota Codified Laws (SDCL).

Hurt in South Dakota? If you are still within the deadline above, you can estimate what your injury claim may be worth with our free South Dakota personal injury settlement calculator. It gives an instant range based on your medical costs and South Dakota's fault rule (general information, not legal advice).

South Dakota Civil Statute of Limitations

South Dakota's civil statutes of limitations are found primarily in SDCL Title 15, Chapter 2. These deadlines determine how long you have to file a lawsuit after an incident occurs or after you discover an injury.

If you fail to file your civil claim before the deadline expires, the opposing party can raise the statute of limitations as a defense and ask the court to dismiss your case. Once dismissed on these grounds, you lose your legal claim permanently.

Personal Injury Claims

South Dakota allows three years to file a personal injury lawsuit under SDCL 15-2-14. The clock typically starts on the date of the injury.

This three-year period applies to most types of bodily injury claims, including car accidents, slip-and-fall incidents, and assault. SDCL 15-2-14(3) itself contains no discovery language: it runs three years from when the cause of action accrues. South Dakota supplies a later, discovery-based start date only where a specific statute says so, such as fraud (SDCL 15-2-3) and product liability (SDCL 15-2-12.2), so do not assume a delayed start applies to an ordinary injury claim.

Wrongful Death

Families in South Dakota have three years from the date of death to file a wrongful death lawsuit under SDCL 21-5-3. The personal representative of the deceased person's estate is the one who must bring the claim.

An important distinction: the three-year clock starts on the date of death, not the date of the incident that caused the death. Also, South Dakota courts have ruled that the discovery rule does not apply to wrongful death claims.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice claims in South Dakota carry a shorter deadline of just two years under SDCL 15-2-14.1. This applies to actions against physicians, surgeons, dentists, hospitals, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, chiropractors, and other healthcare providers.

South Dakota uses an "occurrence rule" for medical malpractice rather than a discovery rule. This means the two-year clock starts when the alleged malpractice happened, not when the patient discovered the harm. This is an unusual approach that most other states do not follow.

There are two limited exceptions. Courts allow tolling when a healthcare provider fraudulently conceals the malpractice. The clock also does not start running during a period of continuing treatment for the same condition.

Legal Malpractice

Claims against attorneys for professional malpractice must be filed within three years under SDCL 15-2-14.2. The section is written in occurrence terms: an action against a licensed attorney, the attorney's agent, or employee "can be commenced only within three years after the alleged malpractice, error, mistake, or omission shall have occurred."

That is the same occurrence wording South Dakota uses for medical malpractice, and SDCL 15-2-14.2 contains no discovery language. Do not plan on the clock starting when you found out about the error.

Contracts

South Dakota provides six years to file a breach of contract lawsuit under SDCL 15-2-13. This applies to both written and oral contracts, which is unusual because most states give longer deadlines for written contracts than oral ones.

For contracts involving the sale of goods, the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) sets a separate four-year deadline under SDCL 57A-2-725. The four-year clock starts when the breach occurs, regardless of whether the buyer knew about the breach at the time.

Fraud

Fraud claims in South Dakota must be filed within six years under SDCL 15-2-13(6). A separate section supplies the discovery trigger: under SDCL 15-2-3, a fraud cause of action "shall not be deemed to have accrued until the aggrieved party discovers, or has actual or constructive notice of, the facts constituting the fraud."

Property Damage and Trespass

South Dakota allows six years for lawsuits involving damage to personal property under SDCL 15-2-13(4) and trespass to real property under SDCL 15-2-13(3). Both deadlines run from the date the damage occurred.

Product Liability

Product liability claims in South Dakota must be filed within three years under SDCL 15-2-12.2. This applies to actions against manufacturers, sellers, or lessors of products that cause personal injury, death, or property damage.

The three-year clock starts from the date the injury occurred, became known, or should have become known to the injured party.

Defamation (Libel and Slander)

Claims for libel and slander must be filed within two years under SDCL 15-2-15(1). Libel refers to written defamation, while slander refers to spoken defamation. The clock starts when the defamatory statement is published or spoken.

Judgments and Debt Collection

South Dakota has some of the longest deadlines in the country for enforcing court judgments. Domestic judgments remain enforceable for 20 years under SDCL 15-2-6. Foreign judgments (those from other states) must be enforced within 10 years under SDCL 15-2-8.

Debt collection lawsuits for open accounts and breach of contract must be filed within six years under SDCL 15-2-13.

Construction Defects

Construction defect claims follow the general six-year statute of limitations for contract actions. South Dakota also has a separate statute of repose under SDCL 15-2A-3 that sets an absolute outer limit of 10 years after substantial completion of the project, regardless of when the defect was discovered.

Accountant Malpractice

Claims against a licensed public accountant, or the accountant's agent or employee, must be filed within three years under SDCL 15-2-14.4. The three years run from when the alleged malpractice, error, mistake, or omission occurred, and the section applies whether the claim is framed in contract or in tort.

Four years applies in one situation only: where the Department of Revenue or the Internal Revenue Service conducts an audit, or issues a notice of intent to conduct an audit. Without that audit trigger, waiting into the fourth year bars the claim.

Complete Civil Statute of Limitations Table

Tolling Provisions: When the Clock Pauses

South Dakota recognizes several situations where the statute of limitations clock can be paused, or "tolled." Understanding these exceptions is important because they can extend your filing deadline.

Minors

Under SDCL 15-2-22, the statute of limitations is tolled for individuals who are under the age of 18 at the time the cause of action accrues, except in medical malpractice cases. Infancy is specifically excepted from South Dakota's five-year cap on disability tolling, so the clock for a minor does not begin running until they turn 18, no matter how many years that takes. (The five-year cap applies only to other disabilities, such as mental illness, not to minors.) In every case, the action cannot be filed more than one year after the disability ends.

Absence from the State

Absence of the defendant is governed by a different section, SDCL 15-2-20, not by the disability provision above. If the defendant is out of the state when the cause of action accrues, the action may be commenced within the normal limitation period after that person returns to South Dakota. If the defendant departs from and resides outside the state after the cause of action accrues, the time of that absence "shall not be deemed or taken as any part of the time limited for the commencement of such action."

This tolling provision does not apply to an action to foreclose a real estate mortgage, whether by action or by advertisement.

Mental Incapacity

The statute of limitations may be tolled for individuals who are mentally ill at the time the cause of action accrues, subject to a five-year cap on the length of the tolling. Unlike mental illness, infancy is excepted from that five-year cap under SDCL 15-2-22.

Discovery Rule

South Dakota does not apply a general, across-the-board discovery rule. The Legislature wrote a discovery trigger into specific sections rather than into the limitations chapter as a whole: a fraud claim does not accrue until the aggrieved party discovers, or has actual or constructive notice of, the facts constituting the fraud (SDCL 15-2-3), and a product liability claim runs three years from when the injury, death, or property damage occurred, became known, or should have become known to the injured party (SDCL 15-2-12.2).

Other sections carry no such language, including the three-year personal injury provision in SDCL 15-2-14(3), the three-year legal malpractice provision in SDCL 15-2-14.2, and the two-year medical malpractice provision in SDCL 15-2-14.1. Treat a delayed start date as an exception you have to locate in a statute, not as the default.

Childhood Sexual Abuse Claims

South Dakota has special rules for civil lawsuits related to childhood sexual abuse. Victims have three years from when they realized or discovered the abuse to file a claim. Since minors cannot file lawsuits on their own, the limitation period does not begin until the victim turns 18, giving them until age 21 to file.

If the victim did not remember or discover the abuse until later in life, the three-year window begins at the time of that discovery. However, South Dakota places an upper age limit of 40 on these claims against entities other than the direct perpetrator.

South Dakota Criminal Statute of Limitations

South Dakota's criminal statutes of limitations are governed by SDCL 23A-42. These laws determine how long prosecutors have to file criminal charges after an offense occurs.

Crimes With No Statute of Limitations

South Dakota has no time limit for prosecuting the most serious criminal offenses. Under SDCL 23A-42-1, there is no statute of limitations for:

• Murder (any degree)
• Class A felonies (punishable by death or life imprisonment)
• Class B felonies (punishable by life imprisonment with no lesser sentence)
• Class C felonies (punishable by up to life imprisonment)

These are the most serious offenses in South Dakota's criminal code, including crimes like first-degree murder, kidnapping, and certain sexual assault offenses.

Seven-Year Deadline for Most Other Offenses

Other criminal offenses in South Dakota, including lower-class felonies and misdemeanors, must be prosecuted within seven years after the commission of the offense under SDCL 23A-42-2. This seven-year deadline is one of the longer general criminal limitation periods in the country.

SDCL 23A-42-2 applies "except as provided in § 23A-42-3." Under SDCL 23A-42-3, a prosecution for forgery or theft may be commenced within seven years after discovery of the crime, and where more than seven years have passed since the offense the failure of discovery must be proven. For those two offenses, an old crime is not automatically time-barred.

Sex Crimes and Felony Classification

South Dakota does not have a victim-age-based extended deadline for sex crimes. Instead, the state's most serious sex offenses, including many rape and aggravated sexual assault charges classified as Class A, B, or C felonies, already fall under the no-limit rule described above. Sex offenses classified below Class C fall under the standard seven-year general period in SDCL 23A-42-2, the same as other lesser felonies and misdemeanors.

Criminal Tolling

Two provisions stop the criminal clock. Under SDCL 23A-42-5, no time during which the defendant is not an inhabitant of South Dakota counts as part of the limitation period. Under SDCL 23A-42-6, no time during which the defendant is determined to be mentally incompetent to proceed under chapter 23A-10A counts either.

Criminal Statute of Limitations Table

How South Dakota Compares to Neighboring States

South Dakota's statute of limitations periods fall roughly in the middle when compared to its neighbors. Here is a quick comparison for common claim types:

South Dakota's seven-year general criminal statute of limitations is notably longer than every neighboring state, giving prosecutors more time to bring charges for lesser offenses.

More South Dakota Laws

• South Dakota Car Accident Laws
• South Dakota Dog Bite Laws
• South Dakota Expungement Laws
• South Dakota Slip and Fall Laws
• South Dakota Workers Compensation Laws