Can I Sue My Apartment Complex After an Assault in Missouri?

Sometimes. A Missouri landlord generally owes tenants no duty to stop crime, but a tenant can sue when the landlord’s own conduct made the attack easier: a broken door, gate or lock it controlled, a key it handed out, violent crime it knew about, or security it promised. That negligence claim has a five-year deadline (RSMo 516.120).

In an apartment case the question is rarely whether the neighborhood was dangerous. It is whether the landlord controlled the thing the attacker used to get to you, and knew it was broken.

01Why Is It Harder to Sue a Landlord Than a Hotel?

Because Missouri treats a tenant differently from a guest or a customer. A hotel’s duty to guests rests partly on the innkeeper relationship, and a store or mall owes customers a duty once prior violent crime makes an attack foreseeable (Madden v. C & K Barbecue Carryout, Inc., 758 S.W.2d 59, Mo. banc 1988). Our article at /blog/can-i-sue-a-hotel-for-an-assault-in-missouri/ covers those rules.

Missouri courts have held that landlord and tenant is not, by itself, a “special relationship” (Faheen v. City Parking Corp., 734 S.W.2d 270, Mo. App. E.D. 1987; Schelp v. Cohen-Esrey Real Estate Services, Inc., 889 S.W.2d 848, Mo. App. W.D. 1994). The tenant holds the keys, so the law asks for more.

The Supreme Court of Missouri described that something in Letsinger v. Drury College, 68 S.W.3d 408 (Mo. banc 2002). A landlord’s duty arises from “special circumstances,” meaning evidence that the risk of attack “was increased by some action or failure of the landlord,” so that the landlord “presented the criminals with a particular focus or unique opportunity.” The Western District had listed the usual examples (Vittengl v. Fox, 967 S.W.2d 269, Mo. App. W.D. 1998):

• The landlord made contractual or other representations or assurances to the tenant about security.
• The landlord had notice of earlier crimes of a similar character on the premises.
• The landlord exposed the tenant to an enhanced risk of crime and knew of that risk.
• The landlord knew a particular dangerous or violent person posed a risk to the tenant.
• Some other circumstance justifies shifting responsibility for the tenant’s security to the landlord.

Separately, a landlord must use ordinary care to keep the parts of the property it controls reasonably safe.

02What if the Attacker Got In Through a Broken Lock, Gate or Window?

Then the case turns on who controlled it. In Aaron v. Havens, 758 S.W.2d 446 (Mo. banc 1988), a tenant at 5560 Cates in the City of St. Louis was raped by an intruder who climbed the fire escape and came in through a window whose latch she had reported broken many times. A burglar had already entered her apartment through balcony doors reachable from the fire escape, and the landlord knew it. The court held she stated a claim: “The owner of an apartment building has a recognized duty to use due care to make common premises safe, as against foreseeable risks.”

Two points from Aaron matter in every case. The fire escape counted because “no tenant had the right to make repairs or modifications” to it. And the earlier break-in did not have to be a sexual assault: “If a burglar may enter, so may a rapist.” But the court did not decide whether the landlord had to fix the latch inside the unit, and declined to say a landlord must fence or gate a building.

Stubbs v. Panek, 829 S.W.2d 544 (Mo. App. W.D. 1992), shows control proven. A child was abducted from a rented unit in Belton through a front door that could be opened with a credit card. The father had complained repeatedly and was told he could not add a deadbolt or repair the door himself. The court sent that claim to trial, along with a second: the landlord had let a man outside its control hold a key to the unit.

Schelp shows the opposite. A tenant was struck by an intruder inside her Warrensburg apartment, and a jury found for her. The verdict was reversed. Her lease gave her exclusive possession, and the landlord’s keeping a key and a right to make repairs was not, “without more,” enough control to make it answer for her safety inside the unit.

03Do Earlier Crimes at the Complex Have to Be Assaults?

Not identical ones, but violent ones. For businesses, the Supreme Court of Missouri has said “Foreseeability does not require identical crimes in identical locations” (L.A.C. v. Ward Parkway Shopping Center Co., 75 S.W.3d 247, Mo. banc 2002). Apartment cases have asked for more than a general record of trouble.

In Vittengl, a tenant at an Independence complex was attacked walking from her car to her building at 1:15 a.m. Police had been called for domestic disturbances and thefts from cars, there had been a report of a peeping tom, and underwear had been stolen from the laundry room. The court held that property crimes in the parking area and laundry room did not create a duty to guard against a violent attack, and reversed her verdict.

Location matters too. In Faheen, a tenant of the Mansion House Center apartments downtown was killed by a car bomb in the attached garage. The pleaded crimes covered a whole city block and were mostly property crimes, so the claim was dismissed. A high-crime neighborhood, standing alone, is not a special circumstance (Kopoian v. George W. Miller & Co., 901 S.W.2d 63, Mo. App. W.D. 1995).

A landlord’s file of tenant complaints can do more for a case than a neighborhood crime map. The complaints show what this landlord was told about this building.

04What About an Assault in the Parking Lot or Garage?

A parking lot, garage, stairwell, laundry room or entry door is usually a common area the landlord controls, which is the strongest ground for duty. Control alone does not win the case. The tenant still has to show the landlord knew or should have known of the danger and that its failure caused the attack.

Causation is where apartment verdicts have been lost. In Vittengl, the tenant blamed an unlit side of the building and an oversized sign, and her expert said the attacker chose the complex because of them. The court called that speculation, found no evidence the attack would not have happened but for the lighting, and reversed. In Kopoian, a verdict for tenants built on a defective porch light, an overgrown bush and a missing deadbolt was reversed for lack of a special circumstance.

Tie the defect to the attack itself. A garage door reported broken, which video shows the attacker walking through, is a different case from a claim that the lot was too dark.

05What if the Landlord Promised Security or Knew About a Specific Person?

Both can create a duty. Representations or assurances about security are the first special circumstance Vittengl lists, so the lease, the security addendum, the leasing office’s emails and the “gated” or “controlled access” advertising all matter.

A security contractor can owe its own duty. In L.A.C., the court held that a company that contracts to provide security assumes a duty to the people it was hired to protect, and must perform it with reasonable care. A patrol or courtesy officer contract is one of the first documents to get.

A known danger is different from a general one. In Wieland v. Owner-Operator Services, Inc., 540 S.W.3d 845 (Mo. banc 2018), an employee told her employer she feared an ex-boyfriend and gave it his photograph; he later shot her in its parking lot. The court affirmed a verdict for her and explained that this duty arises once the owner knows or has reason to know the specific dangerous person is on the premises, with time to act. Wieland arose at a workplace, but Vittengl lists the same circumstance for landlords. A tenant who reported a stalker or abusive former partner to management, and saw staff ignore him on the property, may have this claim.

06What if a Maintenance Worker or Another Employee Assaulted Me?

The landlord is rarely liable just because it employed him. An employer answers for an employee’s acts only if they were within the scope of employment and done for the purpose of the work assigned, and the Supreme Court of Missouri held that a priest’s sexual misconduct did not meet that test (Gibson v. Brewer, 952 S.W.2d 239, Mo. banc 1997).

The claim is usually against the landlord’s own decisions. Negligent hiring and negligent retention require that the employer knew or should have known of the worker’s dangerous proclivities, and the earlier misconduct must fit the harm (Reed v. Kelly, 37 S.W.3d 274, Mo. App. E.D. 2000). In Stubbs, a worker’s criminal record did not show a risk of abduction and assault, so that claim failed even though the key claim went forward.

Warning signs that do fit look like the testimony in Schelp, where tenants said a maintenance man entered apartments without notice, once just after a woman had showered. That case was lost on the question of control, not on those facts. Negligent supervision reaches an employer that knows it can control a worker on its premises and knows it needs to (Reed).

07How Is Fault Divided Between the Landlord and the Attacker?

Missouri uses pure comparative fault (Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11, Mo. banc 1983), and fault is apportioned only among the parties at trial (Kansas City Power & Light Co. v. Bibb & Associates, Inc., 197 S.W.3d 147, Mo. App. W.D. 2006). A defendant found 51 percent or more at fault is jointly and severally liable for the judgment. A defendant found less than 51 percent at fault pays only its own percentage, unless another defendant was acting as its employee (RSMo 537.067.1).

A landlord sued alongside the attacker will argue that most of the fault belongs to the person who committed the crime. In Aaron, a dissenting judge would have let the jury allocate fault among landlord, tenant and criminal; the majority did not take that step. The current statute does not say whether an intentional crime is weighed on the same scale as a landlord’s negligence, and we have found no Missouri appellate decision that squarely decides that question in a negligent security case.

A landlord may also blame the tenant, for a propped door, say. Under pure comparative fault that can reduce a recovery but not bar it.

08What if the Garage or Lot Is Owned by the City?

Then sovereign immunity may apply. Missouri waives it for injuries caused by a dangerous condition of public property, if the condition directly caused the injury, created a foreseeable risk of that kind of harm, and was created by an employee or known to the entity in time to fix it (RSMo 537.600.1(2)). The waiver applies whether the entity was acting in a governmental or proprietary capacity (RSMo 537.600.2).

The Supreme Court of Missouri held that “dangerous condition” means a defect in the physical condition of the property. It approved a decision rejecting a claim over a rape on a state hospital’s parking lot that rested on prior assaults and an absent guard, and said a plaintiff must show more than that the property “in some remote way presaged” a crime by another (Kanagawa v. State ex rel. Freeman, 685 S.W.2d 831, Mo. banc 1985). Immunity is also waived to the extent of liability insurance the entity buys (RSMo 537.610). Outside those waivers, a city is immune for governmental activities but not proprietary ones (State ex rel. Board of Trustees of North Kansas City Memorial Hospital v. Russell, 843 S.W.2d 353, Mo. banc 1992). Who owns and who operates the garage come first.

09What Evidence Matters in an Apartment Case?

It has to prove control, notice and causation, and most of it is held by the landlord or the police.

• The police calls-for-service history for the address. Incident reports, including logs of reported crimes and complaints, are open records (RSMo 610.100.1(4), 610.100.2), and a person involved in an incident may obtain closed records for a civil claim (RSMo 610.100.4).
• The complex’s own incident reports, courtesy officer logs and patrol company reports.
• Work orders and tenant portal requests for broken gates, door closers, locks, lights and cameras, with their dates.
• Camera locations, whether the cameras worked, and how long the system keeps footage before it records over it.
• Key, fob and access-control logs, and the record of who was issued master or duplicate keys.
• Leasing-office emails, texts and notes about earlier complaints, and any notice the complex sent tenants about crime.
• The lease, any security addendum and the complex’s advertising.

Video and access logs are often overwritten first. A written preservation demand to the owner, the management company and any security contractor puts them on notice to keep them.

10When Should You Call a Lawyer?

Before the records are gone, and well before the deadlines. The claim against the attacker has two years (RSMo 516.140) and the negligence claim against the complex has five (RSMo 516.120(4)); our article at /blog/how-long-do-sexual-abuse-survivors-have-to-sue-in-missouri/ covers survivors who were minors and the other exceptions. No police report, charge or conviction is required to bring the civil claim.

Our sexual assault page at /sexual-assault/ explains how we approach claims against the institutions involved. David Gregory of The Injury Counsel secured a $27 Million Verdict in a hotel assault case. Every case turns on its own facts, and a past result does not predict the outcome of any other case.

Call The Injury Counsel at (314) 727-7220 for a free, confidential consultation. We will identify who owned, managed and secured the property, ask the police and the complex for the records that show what they knew, and tell you which deadlines apply.