The NAM led five other organizations in an amicus brief urging the California Court of Appeal to affirm a lower court ruling that holds that a component part manufacturer cannot be liable for failing to warn about alleged hazards in external or replacement parts that are added after the product is made. We oppose efforts by the plaintiffs’ bar to seek out manufacturers whose connection to asbestos-containing products is increasingly remote, and the trial court correctly held that manufacturers of component parts should only be liable for defects or hazards in their own products, not those of others.
The case involves a man who allegedly developed mesothelioma while working in the Navy aboard the U.S.S. Hornet. Since the Navy is protected from liability by sovereign immunity, and virtually all asbestos manufacturers have been forced into bankruptcy, the plaintiff sued solvent component part manufacturers for asbestos in parts they never made, sold, installed or profited from.
Our brief supported well-established law that a manufacturer of one product has no duty to warn about the alleged hazards of another's product. This is true even where the supplier knew its product may be integrated into another product that could cause harm. A duty to warn would be unmanageable and unsound public policy, and could result in a duty by a syringe manufacturer to warn of the danger of all drugs that it may be used to inject, or a bread manufacturer to warn of peanut allergies since a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a foreseeable use of the bread. Smokers with lung cancer could sue manufacturers of matches and lighters for failure to warn. Such a rule would worsen the asbestos litigation problem, which appears to be continuing to grow in California.
On Feb. 25, 2009, the court of appeal adopted our position and rejected a duty on component part suppliers to warn of asbestos in others' products. According to the court, "a manufacturer has no duty to warn of defects in products supplied by others and used in conjunction with the manufacturer's product unless the manufacturer's product itself causes or creates the risk of harm. . . . (and] manufacturers or suppliers of nondefective component parts bear no liability when they simply build a product to a customer's specifications but do not substantially participate in the integration of their components into the final product." The court rejected liability under both strict liability principles and negligence law.