Missouri appeals court reverses dismissal in dangerous road case

The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, unanimously reversed and remanded the judgment Sept. 16 in a premises liability suit involving a road intersection in Nodaway County.

The appeal stems back to the trial court’s dismissal of a claim of negligence against the county and Polk Township over what plaintiffs Clint Puckett and Kevin Bradshaw deemed a dangerous T-intersection with westbound 280^th Street and Katydid Road.

In 2019, Puckett and Bradshaw were driving on westbound 280^th Street in rural Polk Township; Bradshaw was a passenger in the front seat. Puckett did not see the T-intersection with Katydid Road in time to stop, and crossed through the intersection, hitting a ditch and embankment. Both Puckett and Bradshaw suffered several injuries as a result of the accident.

The plaintiffs’ petition alleged that they did not know the road ended in a T-intersection, nor was there sufficient warning about or lighting around the intersection. The speed limit on 280^th Street at the time of accident was 50 miles per hour, which the plaintiffs were driving under at the time.

The defendants moved to dismiss the petition, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to “state a claim upon which relief can be granted” per Rule 55.27(a)(6). The defendants claimed the petition did not have enough specific facts demonstrating the defendants had waived sovereign immunity, and that allegations of negligence “do not implicate the waiver of sovereign immunity … for injuries resulting from a ‘dangerous condition‘ of public property because such a dangerous condition must be a physical defect.”

The defendants said the lack of road signage about the upcoming T-intersection, and lack of artificial lighting, were not physical defects. Case law interpreting Revised Statute 537.600.1(2) recognizes waiver of sovereign immunity in instances where the failure to install or maintain road signs or traffic devices compromises roadway safety; however, the defendants argued the plaintiffs’ claim did not expressly allege that the defendants’ failure to install signage made the intersection defective or dangerous.

The trial court sided with the defendants in October 2024, granting the motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs appealed, landing the case before the appellate court.

Contrary to the trial court, the Western District found that the plaintiffs’ petition adequately alleged a dangerous condition sufficient to potentially waive sovereign immunity under Section 537.600.1(2). The court said that “it is long-settled jurisprudence that a physical defect in public property or its condition includes the ‘negligent, defective, or dangerous design of a highway or road,’” and therefore sovereign immunity might be waived due to the dangerous condition.

“That is not to say that the absence of signage or traffic controls, alone, is sufficient to constitute a dangerous condition of a public roadway,” the opinion stated. “Instead, the threat posed by the very existence of a roadway’s condition or design is the ‘dangerous condition’ that waives sovereign immunity, resulting in a corresponding duty of care imposed on a governmental entity with control over the roadway to remedy or warn of the foreseeable risk posed by the roadway’s dangerous condition.”

The court referred to several court cases, such as Benoit v. Missouri Highway & Transportation Commission, and Linton v. Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission, where verdicts for the plaintiffs found the dangerous condition of public roadways waived sovereign immunity.

“What all of these cases have in common are allegations that the condition of a roadway (including its design) by its very nature created a hazard warranting adequate signage or warnings to alert motorists to the danger,” stated the opinion.

The court said the plaintiffs’ petition did not claim that the absence of traffic control or signage made the intersection dangerous, but rather that, “fairly read,” their claim alleged that a “T intersection in a rural area was a dangerous condition because a motorist unaware of the intersection, driving at a 50-mile-per-hour speed limit in dark conditions, could be foreseeably expected to drive through the intersection and into the ditch on the opposite side of the intersection.”

The motion to dismiss was reversed and remanded.

The case is Clint Puckett, E Al., v. Nodaway Country, Mo., Et Al., Case No. WD87656.