Ben Kleinjan, Esq.

24/07/2025

~Life Saving Award~

Last night at the Lincoln County Commission meeting, Sheriff Steve Swenson and the Lincoln County Commission honored two local heroes and presented them each with a life saving award and a gold sheriff’s challenge coin. The selfless and heroic actions taken by Billie Jo Rothenberger and Kent Walz directly resulted in saving not one, but the lives of two drowning victims at Lake Alvin on July 6th, 2025. We are very proud of them and felt it absolutely necessary to share this story with everyone.

Here is the synopsis of the life saving event that occurred at Lake Alvin on July 6th.
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On July 6th, 2025, at 10:17 am, Lincoln County Dispatch received a 911 call from an unknown person at Lake Alvin about a person not breathing. The caller did not provide any location information or details as to what happened. When Lincoln County Deputies arrived, they located Billie Rothenberger near the entrance station directing them to where they needed to go, which was needed due to the lack of call information. Billie continued to direct other first responders to the swim beach.

During the investigation, deputies learned that a 15-year-old boy and his father were outside of the swim zone at Lake Alvin and both started struggling to swim and stay afloat. The mother, who could also not swim, started yelling for help. Billie heard the calls for help as she was preparing her stand up paddleboard to go on the lake. Billie immediately started paddling out to help. Billie was able to get the father back to the raft that he had to keep him afloat. By now the boy had gone underwater. Billie paddled over to where he was last seen and with some help from the nearby father directing her where to go, Billie located the boy’s body that was completely underwater and unresponsive. Billie put a life jacket on the boy and swam him back to shore.

Kent Walz who was fishing down the shoreline heard the commotion and went over to help. Kent quickly recognized that the boy was unresponsive and not breathing. Kent immediately started CPR on the boy. After several compressions, Kent was able to revive the boy to where he started coughing up water and eventually started breathing on his own.

Without Billie’s quick actions, the father may not have been able to reach the raft and keep himself afloat, and the boy would have slipped further underwater to where she would not have been able to see him. Combined with Kent’s immediate initiation of CRP to get the boy breathing again, it is quite likely two lives would have been lost that day.

21/07/2025

⏰"So, we don't have a lot of time to make up for that soon to be voted or the voted on loss here, the rescission. We will have to look at all of our local content. We will have to look at staff across the board. And I am planning multiple scenarios that we will discuss with our state governance board next week, Friday when they meet. I believe Ryan has set up a meeting with his executive board at Friends so we can get their input and their thoughts before we make any major decisions, but would be to put a plan together of cuts and layoffs to try to get us to $2.2 million or whatever lesser amount there might be, because we think whatever fundraising might be able to offset in that"

"I think people need to understand — just basic with rescission — rescission is money that was already appropriated. In March, Congress approved funding that would have given SDPB about $2.2 million in grants from CPB in this year's fiscal budget. So, we plan for that money to be here in our FY26 budget. And to Ryan's point, the state government budget starts on July 1. The federal government is in October, so we only have three months before what we were anticipating being our first grant payment coming in, not showing up."

19/07/2025

🚒 This juvenile case explains who must pay restitution for damage from a fire from playing with fireworks indoors. The Court held that the kid who lied to the police to cover it up isn't responsible for paying restitution, just the kid who lit the fireworks. This is based on the Court's plain reading of the statute, which requires a causal connection between the charge and the damage. Lying to police didn't burn up the trailer. 👮

18/07/2025

⚾ 𝟐 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝐓𝐨 𝐆𝐨!

SDSU Night at Target Field is almost here! Join us on Saturday, July 26, and cheer on the Minnesota Twins as they take on the Washington Nationals at 6:10 PM.

This special "SDSU Night" ticket package includes your ticket to the game plus an exclusive co-themed SDSU Twins jersey! The night will also include an honorary first pitch by a distinguished alum! A portion of each ticket purchased through this special ticket package will support the SDSU Alumni Association.

Get yours at twins.com/sdsu

18/07/2025

🗓️ In this case, the SD Supreme Court reversed the Circuit judge’s dismissal of a plaintiff’s case, pointing out a possible source of the confusion in the statute. The decision suggests a multifactor approach could more be appropriate than simply the passage of days on the docket calendar. This is a procedural decision of particular interest to civil litigators.

16/07/2025

15/07/2025

🐮SD Supreme Court affirmed the jury's split decision in this dairy case. The farmer claimed the defendant sold him contaminated feed, allegedly killing livestock. The jury sided with the farmer, BUT they awarded $0 compensation.
The decision discussed "accord and satisfaction," a principle of contract law, but I was much more drawn to the allegations of a contaminated jury pool. That argument was not enough to reverse the verdict. In SD, you really only need ten out of twelve jurors to win in a civil case, so even if, for the sake of argument, one juror was biased for the defense, it's not what lawyers call "prejudicial" enough to reverse the decision.
⚠️In my view, a major hazard in farm litigation in general is the performance of the defense expert witness, usually hired by the insurance company to shift blame from the defendant to the farmer's practices and put the farmer on trial instead. It's unpleasant to me because I've never met a farmer who isn't putting in great effort at personal risk to life and limb. On the other hand, the insurance industry needs best practices goalposts. Farm practices must constantly improve to remain competitive in our economic system.

14/07/2025

✏️ What happened on Bastille day, 14 July, 1789? Thomas Jefferson wrote this letter to John Jay about what he saw. I can still read cursive, can you?

14/07/2025

⚖ SD Supreme Court clarifies elements of slander to title claims. Meta doesn't like text only pictures, which makes image cropping more glitchy with the last update. 🤷‍♂️

13/07/2025

☑️ I enjoyed this SD Law Review article about the history and changes to the initiative and referendum process in SD since 2006. Always good to remember how the sausage gets made. 🧑‍🍳
Thanks to South Dakota Searchlight for the lead.

11/07/2025

Thanks to Turbak Law Office, P.C. for supporting this camp in Watertown an Codington County!