The case itself: Wood v. City of Crooks
In this real 1997 South Dakota Supreme Court case, a jury heard the evidence and apportioned fault: 30% to the plaintiff, Wood, and the remaining 70% collectively to the defendants, including the City of Crooks. Under an ordinary comparative negligence system, this finding would simply reduce Wood's recovery by 30%. South Dakota's law doesn't work that way.
The court's ruling: 30% is "more than slight," as a matter of law
The South Dakota Supreme Court held that, given the jury's own 30% finding, Wood's contributory negligence was more than slight in comparison with the defendants' combined 70% negligence — as a matter of law. That ruling barred Wood's recovery entirely, despite the jury having found the defendants substantially more at fault overall.
A genuinely important detail: combined defendant fault
The Wood decision also confirmed that this comparison accounts for the combined negligence of all defendants, including those who had already settled out of the case before trial — not just whichever defendant remained to argue the case. A defendant can't narrow the comparison down to just their own individual share.
Informal benchmarks, without a bright line
Practical guidance drawing on South Dakota case law has generally treated roughly 10% to 20% fault as "slight," while 30% or more has, at least based on Wood, crossed into "more than slight" territory. But none of this is codified as a fixed percentage in the statute itself — each case turns on its own specific facts and how a court characterizes the comparison.
A real 2015 attempt to address this dynamic
A 2015 legislative proposal responded directly to the Wood scenario: it suggested that a jury's determination of whether a plaintiff's negligence was slight be made without disclosing the jury's own specific percentage finding — an attempt to prevent exactly the outcome in Wood, where a jury's own 30% number became the basis for a court ruling that recovery was barred as a matter of law.
Why understanding Wood genuinely matters today
Because South Dakota's "slight" standard isn't a fixed percentage, a specific jury finding of fault — even one well under 50% — can still become the basis for a court ruling that recovery is barred entirely, exactly as it did for Wood. Anyone evaluating a South Dakota claim needs to weigh this real possibility, not just assume that being "less than half at fault" guarantees some recovery the way it would in most other states.