A Missouri appellate court determined a property owner and Starbucks cannot be held liable for negligence after a motorist drove a vehicle through the cafe storefront, concluding the defendants couldn’t reasonably predict a driver crashing into the building despite a similar incident occurring 10 years prior.
In a Tuesday opinion, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District affirmed a St. Louis County Circuit Court decision, which granted summary judgment to the defendants in the negligence and premises liability suit. A group of plaintiffs filed suit against Keat Properties, McKnight Investors and Starbucks Corp., after a motorist drove his sports utility vehicle through a Starbucks storefront in St. Louis in 2020, killing one person and injuring two others. The plaintiffs argued that factual issues remained disputed regarding whether the configuration of the parking lot constituted a dangerous condition, given that another car had crashed into the coffee shop nearly a decade earlier.