A St. Louis premises liability lawyer for the falls, bites, and buildings nobody kept safe.
ClearScope Counsel takes premises liability cases across St. Louis City and County — slip-and-fall injuries, dog bites, negligent security, and injuries on property that was not kept safe — on a flat 33% contingency fee with no upfront attorney fees or costs. You pay nothing unless we recover, and a Missouri-licensed attorney replies within one business day.
A preliminary inquiry does not create an attorney-client relationship. Please hold sensitive records until we complete a conflicts check.
Who is legally responsible when you are hurt on someone else’s property?
The owner or business in control of the property — but only to the degree Missouri law made it responsible for someone in your position.
A customer in a Schnucks aisle, a tenant on an apartment stairwell, a visitor in a Washington Avenue parking garage — Missouri common law calls these invitees, and the owner owes them the most: reasonable care to inspect the property, and to fix dangerous conditions or warn about them. A social guest (a licensee) is generally owed a warning about dangers the owner actually knows of. A trespasser is generally owed far less. The label controls the duty, and the duty controls the case — the owner’s insurer will argue for the cheapest label available, which is why establishing why you were on the property is the first piece of legal work in these claims.
What do you have to prove in a Missouri slip-and-fall case?
Notice: that the owner knew about the hazard, or that it existed long enough that a reasonably careful owner should have found it. A spill that hit the floor thirty seconds before you did is a very different case from a leak that had been puddling all afternoon.
That is why the evidence race starts immediately. Inspection and sweep logs, the store’s incident report, maintenance records, and above all camera footage — which is routinely overwritten within days — establish how long the condition existed and who walked past it. We send preservation letters early, before the footage cycle erases the answer. Report the fall before you leave, photograph the hazard and your shoes, and get the names of witnesses.
Expect the defense to argue the hazard was “open and obvious” and that you should have seen it. That argument goes to percentage, not to whether you can recover: Missouri applies pure comparative fault, reducing your recovery by your share of fault but never cutting it off entirely (Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11 (Mo. banc 1983)). And when the adjuster calls for a recorded statement about the fall, the same caution applies here as after a crash — our recorded statement explainer covers what to say instead.
Does Missouri have a “one free bite” rule for dogs?
No — Missouri is a strict-liability dog bite state. Under RSMo 273.036, in force since August 28, 2009, a dog’s owner is liable for an unprovoked bite anywhere the victim had a right to be, even if the dog had never shown aggression before — though the award is reduced by any percentage of fault assigned to the person bitten.
The statute’s elements are short: a bite, without provocation, while the victim was on public property or lawfully on private property — including the dog owner’s own yard. The dog’s history and the owner’s knowledge of it are expressly irrelevant, and an owner held liable also faces a fine of up to $1,000. The statute covers bites specifically; a knockdown or other dog-caused injury proceeds under ordinary negligence, which the statute preserves as a cumulative remedy. With liability largely settled by statute, these cases turn on documentation — wound care, scarring, the animal-control report — and are frequently paid by the owner’s homeowner’s or renter’s policy.
Can you sue a business for a crime that happened on its property?
Sometimes. Missouri law can hold a business or landlord responsible for an assault or shooting on its property when the danger was foreseeable and the owner failed to take reasonable security measures — the claim is called negligent security, and in St. Louis it is not a theoretical practice area.
The pattern repeats across the region: an apartment complex where the gates and door locks stopped working months ago, a gas station lot with dead lighting and a history of robberies, a parking garage whose cameras were never wired to record. The legal question is foreseeability — what the owner knew about prior incidents on and around the property — and the factual work is proving it: police call logs for the address, prior incident reports, maintenance and staffing records. A conviction of the attacker compensates no one; the civil claim against the property owner is usually the only path to a real recovery, and when the injury is fatal it proceeds as a wrongful death claim for the family.
Is a property owner liable if you slip on ice or snow?
Usually not for natural accumulation. Missouri follows the “Massachusetts rule”: a property owner generally owes no duty to clear snow or ice that accumulated naturally and is a condition general to the community (Richey v. DP Props., LP, 252 S.W.3d 249, 251–52 (Mo. App. E.D. 2008)).
The exceptions are where these cases live. The duty returns when the owner assumed it — by contract, or through a course of conduct that actually altered the condition of the snow or ice — or when the accumulation was not natural in the first place: a downspout discharging across a walkway, a plow ridge left across the path, refreeze from mis-drained melt. The Eastern District’s recent application, O’Donnell v. PNK (River City), LLC, No. ED108986 (Mo. App. E.D. Mar. 9, 2021), shows how strictly the exceptions are read: monitoring the storm, warning patrons, and calling a snow contractor were held not enough to assume the duty, and there is no duty to clear precipitation while it is still falling. A snow-removal contractor can itself take on the duty by contract. If you fell on ice, the case turns on where the ice came from and who touched it.
What if you were hurt on a public sidewalk or government property in St. Louis?
Move immediately: before suing the City of St. Louis over an injury caused by a defective street, sidewalk, bridge, or thoroughfare, RSMo 82.210 — in force since 1939 — requires written notice to the mayor within 90 days of the injury, stating where and when it happened, how it happened, and that you will claim damages. Miss the notice and the lawsuit is barred.
That notice statute covers defect-in-condition claims about the City’s ways — it is not a general rule for every claim against the City, but for a broken sidewalk in Tower Grove or a crumbling step downtown it is the whole ballgame. Behind it sits sovereign immunity: claims against public entities — the City, the County, school districts, Metro — must fit narrow statutory waivers such as the dangerous-condition-of-public-property waiver, and recoveries are subject to statutory caps that adjust annually, with no punitive damages (RSMo 537.610). Those statutes were rewritten by SB 916 effective August 28, 2026, and the date of your injury now matters in new ways — our sovereign immunity explainer covers what changed and what did not.
What does it cost to bring a premises case?
A flat 33% of the recovery — and nothing if there is no recovery. No upfront attorney fees, no costs out of pocket, no percentage that climbs when the case gets hard. The property owner’s carrier has counsel from day one; the contingency fee exists so you can too. No silent meter.
No recovery is guaranteed. The fee and how case expenses are handled are confirmed in a written contingency fee agreement before representation begins.
Questions people ask after a property injury.
Report it to the manager before you leave and ask that an incident report be made, photograph the hazard and your footwear, get names of any witnesses, and get medical care the same day. Store camera footage is routinely overwritten within days, so an attorney should send a preservation letter quickly.
No. Missouri applies pure comparative fault: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault but is never cut off entirely, no matter how large that percentage is (Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11 (Mo. banc 1983)). The argument is about the percentage, not about whether you can recover at all.
Most Missouri injury claims must be filed within five years (RSMo 516.120); a wrongful death claim within three years (RSMo 537.100). But a claim against the City of St. Louis over a defective street or sidewalk requires written notice to the mayor within 90 days of the injury (RSMo 82.210) — by far the shortest clock on this page.
A flat 33% contingency fee — one third of the recovery, confirmed in writing before representation begins. No upfront attorney fees or costs, and no fee at all unless you recover.
The strict-liability statute (RSMo 273.036) covers bites specifically. Other dog-related injuries — a knockdown, a chase into traffic — proceed under ordinary negligence, which the statute expressly preserves as a cumulative remedy.