The Eastern District Court of Appeals for Missouri recently upheld summary judgment in the nationally watched wrongful death case of Simmons v. Keat Properties, LLC, 717 S.W.3d 259 (Mo. Ct. App. 2025). The Simmons case involved the tragic death of a retired school teacher, and injury of others, when a driver of a car accidently drove through a store front of a Starbucks. Thousands of cases have been filed nationwide against commercial property owners in these heartbreaking scenarios alleging that commercial property owners have a duty to install bollards or similar devices to prevent vehicles from crashing into store fronts causing serious injuries or death. Some of these “no bollards” cases across the country have resulted in multi-million dollar judgements against commercial property owners. See, e.g., Dubuque v. Cumberland Farms, Inc., 101 N.E.3d 317 (Mass. Ct. App. 2018).
However, in this case of first impression in Missouri, the Court of Appeals disagreed with the majority of states that have allowed such cases to go to a jury to determine whether the property owner was negligent for failing to have bollards to prevent such crashes. Instead, in a very well-reasoned decision, the Simmons Court found the sole cause of the accident was the third-party driver and that the accident was not a foreseeable situation which would require a property owner to install bollards to prevent such accidents. The Court held, as a matter of law, that since this was not a foreseeable event, there was no legal duty to install devices to prevent vehicle/building collisions.
The Simmons case should effectively eliminate “no bollards” litigation in Missouri joining just a small handful of states that have similarly held as a matter of law that there is no general legal duty of a property owner to install bollards to prevent vehicle/building collisions. As such, the Simmons case is destined to be one of the leading cases nationwide on this ever-growing area litigation.
A big congratulations goes out to the legal team of David Bub, Tyler Finnegan and Gus Hayes for this excellent result.