Missouri property owners should clear sidewalks of snow--local TV station gets it wrong

A recent report on Fox4KC claimed that "In Missouri, if you clear your walkway and someone falls, you could be at more risk of being sued than if you just left it alone."

In short, Fox4 is wrong for these reasons:

• Most Missouri cities require property owners to clear public sidewalks--those on the public streets alongside their property--within a reasonable time after snow or ice storms are over.
• So the statement Fox4 quotes applies only to interior sidewalks--for instance, the sidewalk leading from a store's parking lot to its entrance, or the sidewalk leading from the street to your front door.  But even for those sidewalks:
  • If you exercise reasonable care when cleaning the snow and ice, you will have no additional legal liability.
  • You can indeed open yourself to additional risk of being sued by being stupid/careless when clearing the ice and snow--for instance, by clearing an area, leaving a flat sheet of ice, and then not putting down any sand or salt on it.  Simple solution: Don't be stupid or careless. Just do an ordinary, decent job of it and all is well.
  • Property owners have an obligation to clear walkways they know people will use within a reasonable time once a snow or ice storm is over.  In other words, "just leaving it alone" is, in fact, what opens property owners to lawsuits.

Read on for all the details and sources of the information in the above summary.

More at risk--or less--if you clear your walkways?
The law being the law and the courts being the courts, the situation is a little more complex than we would like.

But given that caveat--which would apply to any legal matter with numerous court cases behind it--Fox4 managed to spin this pretty much 100% wrong.

Of course you could be more at risk of being sued if you clear the walkways, particularly if you go out of your way to be especially and unusually stupid and dangerous in the way you do it.

But this summary of the Missouri law and legal precedents provided by the Missouri Bar Association makes it perfectly clear that:

• Property owners who exercise ordinary care in clearing sidewalks and walkways are, in general, not any more liable for injuries than those who do nothing.
   
• No one is required to go to superhuman efforts to remove every bit of snow or ice while a snow or ice storm is underway.
   
• But once the storm is over, if you don't make reasonable efforts to clear areas you know people will use, your liability increases.

Again--some cities may not have the requirement to keep sidewalks clear, but most do.

You can find the requirements for your own city by searching the city code section of your city's web site or calling your city hall.

Who uses those sidewalks?
In the meanwhile--clear your sidewalks! It's no more difficult than clearing your driveway and yes--lots of people do walk on those sidewalks all winter long.

I've been walking all over Raytown the past week or so and pretty much every (completely snow covered) sidewalk I've been on has had tracks.  People do use them, even in the dead of winter.

And when the snow is this deep, probably 10 people walk in the street--where the snow has been cleared--for every one who struggles through the deep snow.

As the St. Joseph News-Press wrote:

. . . sidewalks are often used by senior citizens, children and people with special needs . . .

Those people--people without a driver's license--make up more than 30% of our population and 16% of adults. When the sidewalk is impassable, those folk end up walking in the street--and that's not good for anyone.