SD Supreme Court will rehear Detmers v. Costner

In 1994 after the success of Dances With Wolves actor Kevin Costner purchased a 240-acre parcel in Spearditch Canyon from Homestake Mining Company and traded it to the US Forest Service for 900 acres just north of Deadwood in occupied South Dakota and east of the Preacher Smith Monument some of it straddling Whitewood Creek. Costner was ostracized afterwards by the tribal nations signatory to the Fort Laramie Treaty so he funded Tatanka: Story of the Bison, home to several of Peggy Detmers' magnificent bronze sculptures. 

After receiving only $310,000 of $4 million allegedly promised to Detmers she sued Costner in 2008 for breach of a contract they signed in 2000. It took Detmers nine years to complete the bronzes commissioned for the resort euphemistically known to locals as the Un-Dunbar property until Costner sold it in 2020. 

Detmers argues Costner not only reneged on a promise but that a lower court erred on a definition of “permanent.” So on Wednesday as part of its spring traveling session the South Dakota Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments for a second time in Detmers v. Costner. 

Homestake dumped cyanide and other toxins into Whitewood Creek for a hundred years so the waterway was named a Superfund site in 1981. But, before selling to Canadian miner Barrick, Homestake and Costner restored some of it in 1994 and the stream was taken off the Superfund list in 1996 when the deal with Costner was settled.

It’s believed Costner’s net worth is somewhere around $320 million.

The listing for the $7 million property is linked here and the broker just told an interested party via text that the sculptures are not part of the sale but will indeed be moved.