On January 14, 2022, Richie Aaron, Jr. and Marquise Webb separately boarded an Amtrak train in Illinois (which operated as part of Amtrak’s Lincoln Service—running between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri). The two men were not traveling together and purportedly did not know one another. After they arrived in St. Louis, both men transferred trains to the River Runner Service, which operates between St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri. While aboard the train during a scheduled stop at Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Webb shot Aaron multiple times. Several passengers heard a loud noise from the gunshots, and at least one person reported the suspected gunshots to Amtrak’s crew—but the crewmember dismissed the noise as fireworks.
Aaron’s widow and children sued Amtrak under Missouri negligence, negligent hiring/training, and wrongful death theories. A Missouri jury found Amtrak liable and awarded $8.8 million in compensatory damages and $150 million in punitive damages. Amtrak moved for judgment as a matter of law or, in the alternative, for a new trial or a reduction in punitive damages. The District Court struck the punitive damages as excessive and reduced them to $35.2 million, but denied Amtrak’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and motion for a new trial.
On appeal, the Eighth Circuit reversed the denial of Amtrak’s JMOL and instructed the district court to enter judgment for Amtrak. The panel identified two critical deficiencies in the plaintiffs’ case under Missouri law: (1) lack of duty and (2) lack of causation (related to Amtrak’s alleged failure to discover the shooting and render aid to the decedent).
Under Missouri premises liability law, there is no duty to protect against the criminal acts of third parties. However, there are two exceptions to this general rule: 1) when the defendant knows or has reason to know that a third party is harming or is about to harm an entrant; or 2) when the nature of the business or past experience provides a basis for the reasonable anticipation that the criminal activity of third persons might put entrants at risk.
Amtrak argued, and the Eighth Circuit agreed, that the evidence did not establish that an unprovoked shooting was foreseeable and thus, under Missouri law, it did not have a duty to protect Aaton from the unforeseeable criminal act. Likewise, because Amtrak did not have a duty to protect business invitees from the unforeseeable criminal acts of third parties, it did not owe a duty to warn of such dangers either.
The Court noted that the record lacked evidence of numerous, similar crimes on the specific River Runner service that would put Amtrak on notice that the subject incident was foreseeable. The Court rejected Plaintiffs’ attempt to establish foreseeability, which sought to expand the relevant premises to include Amtrak’s entire Central Division because Plaintiffs’ view did not comport with Missouri law. General crime statistics for the wider Amtrak system and the surrounding areas through which the trains passed did not suffice without some discernible link to the specific premises where the incident occurred, and existing security measures could not be used to show foreseeability of this specific, violent incident.
In sum, the Eighth Circuit reaffirms that duty requires specific foreseeability – not general awareness of crime risk and that crime statistics must be tied to relevant premises or service contexts