Articles Posted in Products Liability

One of the requirements to establish a negligence claim is a duty on the part of a defendant owed to the victim.  In a recent opinion, the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland analyzed the scope of the duty to warn as it applies to a manufacturer of asbestos-containing products.  In the case, the circuit court granted summary judgment against the plaintiffs, who subsequently appealed the matter.

In this case, the plaintiff’s father worked in powerhouses where the defendant installed insulation and cement that contained asbestos.  The installation of these products created dust-containing asbestos fibers that would accumulate on the father’s clothing.  From 1962 to 1972, the plaintiff lived in a small trailer home with his parents, in close contact with the clothing and the laundry machine that washed the clothing.  In 2014, the plaintiff was diagnosed with mesothelioma.  The plaintiffs brought negligence and strict liability claims against the business that installed the asbestos-containing products, based on a failure to warn.

The defendant relied on a previous case, Georgia Pacific, LLC v. Farrar, in which the Maryland Court of Appeals held that a manufacturer or distributor of an asbestos product did not owe a duty to warn the household member of a worker-bystander present at facilities where the product was installed prior to 1972, since there was no practical way that a warning could have avoided the danger to the household member.  The plaintiffs argued that the Farrar holding did not apply because in the present case, the father had access to commercial laundering facilities that specialized in cleaning industrial clothing, there were changing rooms at his workplace, and he would have heeded a warning of the dangers of household exposure.

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In a recent decision, the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland reviewed an asbestos case involving the death of an employee from mesothelioma. In Stein v. Pfizer, Inc. (Md. Ct. Spec. App. May 31, 2016), the employee worked as a bricklayer, using asbestos-containing cement in completing projects for his employer. After the employee’s death, his family and estate brought negligence and other liability claims against several defendants, including the parent company of the cement product’s manufacturer, alleging that it was an apparent manufacturer and therefore liable for the illness and death of the employee.

In Stein, the estate argued that the defendant held itself out as a manufacturer of the asbestos-containing cement because its trademark was in advertisements and promotional materials for the product. The defendant argued that it was a separate corporation from its subsidiary, that none of the manufacturer’s employees held positions with the defendant, and that only a few of the defendant’s employees sat on the manufacturer’s board of directors. The defendant’s motion for summary judgment was granted by the trial court, which found that, under all of the circumstances, a reasonable person could not conclude from the documents that the defendant was the manufacturer of the product at issue. The plaintiffs appealed the decision.

The Court of Special Appeals examined the history and case law pertaining to the apparent manufacturer doctrine, which holds a non-manufacturer liable for a defective product based on its conduct. The court went on to note that there are three tests for determining whether an entity may be found to be an apparent manufacturer, although Maryland case law does not specify which test is to be applied. Nevertheless, the court concluded that under all three tests, the defendant would not be deemed an apparent manufacturer of the asbestos-containing cement.

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