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South Dakota has no dog bite statute, so a dog owner is liable only if you prove negligence: that the owner, acting as a reasonable person, should have foreseen the attack and taken steps to prevent it. Showing that the owner knew or should have known the dog had dangerous tendencies is one way to prove that, and the South Dakota Supreme Court has also allowed victims to show the attack was foreseeable from all the surrounding circumstances. Your own conduct matters a great deal here too, because South Dakota’s fault statute cuts off recovery entirely unless your negligence was slight compared with the owner’s.
This page covers what you must prove, local leash rules, who can be sued, the defenses owners raise, the slight negligence rule, children’s claims and their short deadline, landlord liability after the 2022 Burgi decision, filing deadlines and the 180 day notice for government defendants, damages, South Dakota’s vicious dog nuisance law, rabies confinement, and insurance.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Some states have a statute that makes a dog owner pay for a bite no matter how careful the owner was. South Dakota does not. The civil liability rules in its dog chapter protect livestock, not people: SDCL 40-34-2 makes anyone owning, keeping, or harboring a dog liable for injury it causes to poultry or domestic animals. Nothing in that chapter does the same for a person.
Bite victims asked the South Dakota Supreme Court to fill that gap, and it said no. In Gehrts v. Batteen, decided in January 2001, the court declined to adopt strict liability for dog injuries, noting that the overwhelming majority of states that impose it did so through their legislatures and that the legislature is the proper place for that choice. In 2019, two justices in Ridley wrote that strict liability for unprovoked dog attacks is not recognized under existing law, which is governed by negligence principles.
So a South Dakota dog bite case is a negligence case. Gehrts explained that an owner who knows or has reason to know a dog has abnormally dangerous propensities can be held liable, but that this “is not strict liability.” It is a breach of the ordinary duty of care, and the owner’s usual negligence defenses come with it. The general negligence statute, SDCL 20-9-1, makes every person responsible for injury caused by a want of ordinary care, subject to the defense of contributory negligence.
You may read that South Dakota follows the one bite rule. That shorthand can mislead. A prior bite is not required, and it is not the only way to win. In Rowland v. Log Cabin, Inc. (2003) the court said a victim may argue either that the owner knew or should have known of the dog’s dangerous propensities, or that, under the totality of the circumstances, the injury was reasonably foreseeable.
The Supreme Court restated the test in 2019, in Ridley v. Sioux Empire Pit Bull Rescue. Negligence is the breach of a duty owed to another that proximately causes an injury. Against a dog owner, the plaintiff must establish that, as an ordinary, prudent person, the owner should have foreseen the event that caused the injury and taken steps to prevent it. Whether a duty exists is a question of law for the judge; whether the owner breached it is a question of fact.
Under Gehrts, knowledge is generally imputed to the owner once there is evidence of at least one attack, and an owner’s awareness that a dog constantly barked, bared its teeth, and strained at its leash can show dangerous propensities with no prior attack.
Two rules make these cases harder here than in strict liability states. First, the bite itself does not prove the dog was dangerous: Gehrts rejected the argument that an unprovoked bite is evidence of a dangerous propensity. Second, dogs are presumed tame and docile, and the burden is on the victim to show otherwise. Ridley applied the presumption and affirmed summary judgment for a rescue group and the couple caring for its dog, after the dog’s collar broke at a state campground and it knocked down a woman who had done nothing to provoke it; she said it also bit her. Both Gehrts and Ridley drew two dissents, which shows how close these cases can be.
Evidence about the dog’s past disappears quickly: neighbors move, complaints go unrecorded, posts are deleted. The earlier someone collects it, the better.
South Dakota’s dog chapter, SDCL chapter 40-34, does not set a statewide leash rule. It gives the subject to local government. Under SDCL 40-34-5, each county board has the power to regulate, restrain, or prohibit the running at large of dogs, and SDCL 9-29-12 gives every municipality the same power along with the power to run a pound. So whether the dog that bit you broke a leash or at-large rule depends on the city or county where it happened.
Where a local rule was broken, it can support an argument that the owner was negligent as a matter of law, a theory called negligence per se. In Alley v. Siepman (1974) the South Dakota Supreme Court stated the general rule: violating a statute or ordinance, unless excused, is ordinarily negligence per se if it proximately causes injury to a person the law was meant to protect. A citation or animal control report is a dated official record of how the dog got to you.
Be realistic about its limits. In the 2022 Burgi case the injured child’s family pleaded negligence per se, then dropped it on appeal, so the court never ruled on it. Ask your lawyer which local ordinance applies where you were bitten.
Because there is no dog bite statute, there is no statutory list of who can be sued for a bite. The question is who had a duty of care over the dog and breached it. That reaches the owner, but it is not limited to the owner.
Other South Dakota dog laws use broad language. The livestock statute reaches anyone owning, keeping, or harboring a dog. The rabies chapter, SDCL 40-12-4, defines an owner as anyone with a property right in a pet, anyone who keeps, harbors, or has custody of it, and anyone who permits it to remain on premises they occupy. Those definitions do not govern a negligence claim directly, but they track the people South Dakota courts have actually seen sued:
If you are not sure who had the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog. One caution runs the other way: if you were yourself caring for the dog as a pet sitter, walker, or housemate, the owner may argue you knew its habits and accepted the risk. Raise that on the first call with a lawyer rather than letting an adjuster find it first.
States with dog bite statutes write their defenses into the statute. South Dakota has no such list. The owner’s defenses are the ordinary negligence defenses, and Gehrts named them: because the claim sounds in negligence, contributory negligence and assumption of the risk are available to temper liability.
Provocation. The defenses Gehrts names are contributory negligence and assumption of the risk; it does not describe a separate provocation defense. An owner who says you teased, hit, or cornered the dog can raise it as contributory negligence, which then runs through the slight negligence rule below. For background, see dog bite provocation.
Assumption of the risk. The owner must prove this defense, and it has three elements. In Rantapaa v. Black Hills Chair Lift Co. (2001) the Supreme Court said the defendant must show the plaintiff had actual or constructive knowledge of the specific risk, appreciated its character, and voluntarily accepted it with the time, knowledge, and experience to make an intelligent choice. Failing any one is fatal to the defense. In Rowland the victim said he asked whether the dog bit and was told it would not, and the court sent the case to a jury, repeating that assumption of the risk is a jury question in all but the rarest cases.
Trespass and crime. In the dog chapter, a victim’s trespass, teasing, or crime is mentioned only in the vicious dog law. SDCL 40-34-15 says no dog may be declared vicious if the injured person was committing a willful trespass or other tort on premises occupied by the owner or keeper, was teasing, tormenting, abusing, or assaulting the dog, or was committing a crime. That controls the vicious label, not a damages claim, though an owner may raise the same facts as negligence on your part. The vicious dog definition itself covers attacks in public places and attacks on delivery workers and other employed people who are on private property with permission.
South Dakota’s fault rule is set by statute. SDCL 20-9-2 says a plaintiff’s contributory negligence does not bar recovery when it “was slight in comparison with the negligence of the defendant,” and in that case damages are reduced in proportion to the plaintiff’s share. Read the other way: if your negligence was more than slight compared with the owner’s, you recover nothing.
So in South Dakota not every partly careless victim recovers something, and the cutoff is not a set percentage. The comparison is between your negligence and the defendant’s, not between your conduct and that of an ordinary careful person. In Carpenter v. City of Belle Fourche (2000) the Supreme Court upheld the pattern jury instruction then in use, which defined slight as “small when compared with the negligence of the defendant,” and said what counts as slight naturally varies with the facts of each case.
In 1997, in Wood v. City of Crooks, the court compared the plaintiff’s negligence with the combined negligence of all the defendants and held that a jury finding of 30 percent fault was more than slight as a matter of law. The legislature answered in 1998 by adding a sentence to 20-9-2 that names Wood: whether a plaintiff’s negligence was slight is decided without disclosing any percentage of the plaintiff’s fault by special interrogatory. So the jury is not asked to put a percentage on your fault when it decides whether that fault was slight.
The Supreme Court has said that negligence, contributory negligence, and assumption of risk are jury questions in all but the rarest cases. Wood adds the exception: when the facts show beyond dispute that a plaintiff’s negligence was more than slight, a court can decide it as a matter of law.
South Dakota children are judged as children. In Alley v. Siepman (1974) the Supreme Court said a minor should be judged by the standard of a minor of like age, intelligence, experience, and capacity, not by adult standards, and that a minor’s contributory negligence is ordinarily a question for the jury. The court added that a child’s violation of a statute or ordinance outside an adult activity is not negligence per se. So a small child who walked up to a dog is not measured against what an adult should have known.
The deadline for a child’s claim is shorter than many parents expect. SDCL 15-2-22 pauses the limitations period while a person is under 18, but says the period cannot be extended in any case longer than one year after the disability ends. Read with the three year deadline, a child bitten at age 5 generally has until the 19th birthday, not the 21st. A child bitten at 16 or 17 generally keeps three years from the bite, since that runs later. Do not assume a child has until 21.
A parent may have a separate claim for the child’s medical bills; in Alley the father sued as guardian for his daughter and for hospital expenses he paid himself. Do not assume the parent’s claim gets the child’s extra time. Treat three years from the bite as the parent’s outside deadline.
For how insurers argue about a child’s behavior, read whether a child can provoke a dog.
South Dakota is one of the hardest states in which to hold a landlord responsible for a tenant’s dog, and the reason is a 2022 decision. In Burgi v. East Winds Court, Inc., filed January 26, 2022, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a Yankton mobile home park owed no duty to a child bitten in the face by a tenant’s pit bull chained on the tenant’s lot. The boy had reached for a basketball inside the chain’s radius and needed multiple corrective surgeries.
The court started from the rule that a landlord who has parted with full possession of the premises is not liable for injury to third persons caused by the tenant’s negligence. The lease allowed only “non-vicious, safe” pets and let the park terminate for any violation. The court read the pet clause as a promise by the tenant, not an obligation on the landlord, and said a right to end a lease is not control.
It went further. Some states hold a landlord liable when it kept control over whether a tenant could have a dog and knew the dog was vicious. The court said that rule cannot be reconciled with South Dakota’s landlord precedents. Without a special relationship or retained control over the leased premises there is no duty, so the court never reached whether the park knew the dog was dangerous. It expressed no opinion on the dog owner’s own liability.
A landlord is not immune in every case. One recognized exception covers a common area the landlord controls, but it requires the injury to come from a dangerous condition upon that area, and in Burgi the dog did not come from the common area. A dog allowed to roam a shared yard or hallway the landlord controls is a set of facts Burgi did not decide. Businesses are different again: a store or bar owes customers reasonable care, which is why the bar in Rowland faced a jury.
Three years, in most cases. SDCL 15-2-14 requires an action for personal injury to be started within three years after the cause of action accrues. Count it from the date of the bite to be safe.
The government notice rule catches people. Public entities include municipalities, counties, school districts, and townships, and notice goes to the officers listed in SDCL 3-21-3: the county auditor, the mayor or city finance officer, the school superintendent, and for the state the attorney general and the commissioner of human resources and administration. An honest mistake about time or place does not void a notice if the government was not misled. For a minor, a court may allow late notice, but the application must be made within two years of the bite. Under SDCL 21-32A-1, a city or county waives its sovereign immunity only to the extent it buys liability insurance or joins a risk sharing pool and that coverage applies to the claim. If animal control, a police dog, or a school is involved, talk to a lawyer well before day 180.
Treat every deadline as an outside limit. Our dog bite statute of limitations guide explains how these clocks interact.
The South Dakota Department of Health classifies any penetration of the skin by an animal’s teeth as a higher risk exposure, and says bites to the face, head, or neck carry a more urgent risk. The state’s own cases bear that out, and show that a knockdown matters too: in Ridley a woman knocked onto a gravel road suffered a fractured finger that needed stitches, plus back pain, medical bills, and lost wages.
South Dakota’s distances add cost. Specialist care may mean long drives, missed work, and lodging for a parent. Keep those receipts.
South Dakota’s damages rule is broad. Under SDCL 21-3-1, the measure of damages for a tort is the amount that will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused, whether it could have been anticipated or not. In a dog bite case that typically includes:
The $500,000 cap on general damages in SDCL 21-3-11 is written for medical malpractice claims against the health care providers it lists. Remember the slight negligence rule, though: any recovery is reduced in proportion to your own share of fault. Prejudgment interest is available on some losses from the date of the injury, but SDCL 21-1-13.1 excludes pain and suffering, emotional distress, and future damages.
Punitive damages are possible but guarded. SDCL 21-3-2 allows them where the defendant was guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice, actual or presumed. Before you may even take discovery on punitive damages, SDCL 21-1-4.1 requires a hearing at which the court finds, on clear and convincing evidence, a reasonable basis to believe the defendant engaged in willful, wanton, or malicious conduct. Ordinary carelessness is not enough. For the broader picture, read our guide to dog bite compensation.
South Dakota’s statewide dangerous dog law is short and old. It treats a vicious dog as a nuisance rather than setting up a designation process. Under SDCL 40-34-13, anyone owning or keeping a vicious dog has committed a public nuisance. SDCL 40-34-14 defines a vicious dog in two ways:
Because a vicious dog is a public nuisance, the remedies are the nuisance remedies: a civil action, abatement, and criminal charges by indictment or information. Under SDCL 21-10-9, a private person specially injured by a public nuisance may sue, and the court may order it abated and award damages. The vicious dog sections, SDCL 40-34-13 to 40-34-15, do not set out a hearing, require insurance or registration, or order euthanasia after a bite. Counties and municipalities have their own power to regulate dogs running at large, and every municipality may declare and abate nuisances under SDCL 9-29-13.
For your injury claim, the dog’s history matters. Under Gehrts, an owner’s knowledge of dangerous propensities is generally imputed once there is evidence of at least one earlier attack. Ask animal control and the police for every earlier report about the dog.
One limit on local power: since 2014, SDCL 40-34-16 has prohibited any South Dakota local government from enforcing an ordinance specific to the breed or perceived breed of a dog. Local rules must apply to all dogs. To learn how bite history affects a dog’s fate, see how many times a dog can bite before being put down.
South Dakota’s reportable disease rules, ARSD 44:20:01:03 and 44:20:01:04, list rabies, human and animal, as a Category I condition; dog bites are not on either list. Report the bite anyway: a report creates a dated official record of the bite and the dog. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
Confinement rests on SDCL 40-12-5. The Department of Health may serve written notice on the owner of a dog that has attacked or bitten a person, requiring the owner to confine it at the owner’s expense on the owner’s premises, at a city pound, or at another designated place for at least ten days. The department may examine the dog during that time, and an owner who ignores the notice commits a Class 1 misdemeanor.
The ten days matter for your treatment. The Department of Health’s rabies guidance says that if the animal stays free of rabies symptoms throughout the observation period, it did not have rabies virus in its saliva when it bit, and no post-exposure treatment is needed. If the dog cannot be found or observed, treatment is commonly considered. The department offers rabies consultations 24 hours a day, and its rabies prevention guidelines set out the decisions your doctor will make.
According to the department’s 2024 rabies surveillance report, 807 dogs were tested in South Dakota from 2015 through 2024 and six were rabid, the most recent in 2019. Skunks and bats carry the disease in the state, and South Dakota has had no human rabies case since 1970. South Dakota’s rabies control chapter, SDCL chapter 40-12, does not itself require dogs to be vaccinated, so ask for proof of vaccination and read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog if the owner cannot produce it.
One useful figure is national insurance claim data, not a South Dakota number: for 2025 the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported that the average cost of a dog-related injury claim was $65,450 nationwide, across 28,450 claims. That is an industry average across every claim, small and large, in every state. It is not a South Dakota settlement value and it does not predict any one case.
What actually drives the value of a South Dakota claim:
Our dog bite settlement amounts page explains how injuries are graded, and the dog bite settlement calculator gives a rough sense of ranges.
Insurance is a major source of payment for dog bite claims: according to the Insurance Information Institute, insurers paid $1.86 billion in dog-related injury claims nationwide in 2025. It says standard homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy’s liability limits, usually $100,000 to $300,000.
Do not take the owner’s word that there is no insurance. When a friend or relative’s dog bit you, a claim can be made against their liability policy, up to its limit, rather than their savings. That insurer’s adjuster may look for evidence your negligence was more than slight, so get advice before you talk.
For the full sequence, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and South Dakota is a state where the hard work happens early. Without a strict liability statute, a case turns on what the owner knew and on the circumstances of the attack. That means tracking down prior complaints and witnesses, getting animal control and confinement records, identifying everyone who had a duty over the dog, and finding every insurance policy that applies.
We also guard against the slight negligence rule. An insurer only needs to convince a jury your fault was more than slight, and it starts building that argument on the first phone call. We handle the insurer so your own words are not turned against you, and we watch the deadlines, including the 180 day government notice and the short clock for a bitten child.
We work on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay to start and no fee unless we recover money for you. Founding attorney Michael Agruss built the firm around injury clients who need someone else to carry the paperwork.
We take dog bite cases across South Dakota, including Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Aberdeen, Brookings, Watertown, and Mitchell. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation. We will tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth bringing.
No. South Dakota has no dog bite statute, and its Supreme Court declined in 2001 to adopt strict liability on its own. The owner is liable if you prove negligence, for example by showing the owner knew or should have known the dog was dangerous, or that the circumstances made an attack reasonably foreseeable. A prior bite helps but is not required.
Only if your fault was slight compared with the owner's. SDCL 20-9-2 bars any recovery when a victim's negligence was more than slight, and when it was slight the award shrinks in proportion to your share. No fixed percentage defines slight; the jury makes that judgment on the facts, which is why statements to an insurer about your own conduct matter so much.
Usually less time than parents expect. The three year limit is paused while the child is under 18, but SDCL 15-2-22 never extends it more than one year past the 18th birthday, so a young child generally must sue by 19. A child bitten at 16 or 17 keeps three years from the bite. A parent's own claim for medical bills should be treated as running three years from the bite.
Rarely. In Burgi v. East Winds Court (2022) the South Dakota Supreme Court held a landlord that has handed possession to a tenant owes no duty to people bitten on the leased property, even when the lease limits pets and lets the landlord evict. Narrow exceptions exist, such as a dangerous condition in a common area the landlord controls, and businesses owe their customers reasonable care.
You must give the government written notice of the time, place, and cause of the injury within 180 days under SDCL 3-21-2, delivered to the officer the law names, such as the county auditor or the mayor or city finance officer. The notice does not extend the three year deadline to sue, and the government waives its immunity from suit only to the extent of its liability insurance or risk pool coverage.
Usually it is confined for observation. SDCL 40-12-5 lets the Department of Health order the owner to confine a dog that bit a person for at least ten days at the owner's expense, at home, a city pound, or another designated place. If the dog stays healthy for those ten days, the department's guidance says it could not have passed rabies when it bit, so rabies shots are not needed.
South Dakota's $500,000 cap on general damages, SDCL 21-3-11, is written for medical malpractice claims. The owner's homeowners or renters policy pays only up to its liability limit. Punitive damages require proof of oppression, fraud, or malice, and a judge must first find clear and convincing evidence of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct.
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