Opinion ID: 1481786
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Efficacy of Warning

Text: The defendants present yet another variation on the causation theme. This submission is that the plaintiffs failed to prove that, even if warnings, adequate for the era, had been given, they would have prevented the decedents from incurring the diseases. The defendants argue that they accordingly were entitled to judgment on motion. The proof is said to have failed in two respects: (1) no evidence that warnings would have reached the decedents; and (2) no evidence that the decedents would have heeded any warnings. The argument is not that the decedents failed to heed warnings actually given, so that, in these negligence cases, decedents were guilty of contributory negligence. Rather, defendants ask us to hypothesize that warnings were given, and then ask us to contemplate the effects of the hypothetical warnings. The legal justification for this exercise is the proximate cause requirement. To establish causation a plaintiff should, in theory, be required to prove not only that she would have read, understood, and remembered the warning, but also that she would have altered her conduct to avoid the injury. How is the plaintiff to carry these burdens? No hard facts or scientific data frame the question. A plaintiff typically can offer little more than self-serving testimony and anecdotal evidence to establish her proximate causation case. Henderson & Twerski, Doctrinal Collapse in Products Liability: The Empty Shell of Failure to Warn, 65 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 265, 305 (1990) (footnote omitted) ( Doctrinal Collapse ). Here, where the relevant inquiry concerns the reactions of persons now deceased to hypothetical warnings, the proof of causation becomes more difficult or, depending on one's point of view, more unreal. At least one commentator on this problem has advocated that [w]here the causal question is not susceptible to any reliable proof whether direct or circumstantial, the proper response seems to be to deny the action in its entirety. R. Epstein, Modern Products Liability Law 106 (1980). That has not, however, been the result of the cases, which pass most causation questions to the jury. Doctrinal Collapse at 309. An apparent majority of courts give plaintiffs the benefit of a presumption that they would have read and heeded a legally adequate warning. See Butz v. Werner, 438 N.W.2d 509, 517 (N.D. 1989) (collecting cases); 3 American Law of Products Liability § 32:74 (3d ed. 1987). [14] Courts do not conclusively so presume; rather, they so presume absent evidence to the contrary. Reyes v. Wyeth Laboratories, 498 F.2d 1264, 1281 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1096, 95 S.Ct. 687, 42 L.Ed.2d 688 (1974); Nissen Trampoline Co. v. Terre Haute First Nat'l Bank, 332 N.E.2d 820, 826-27 (Ind. Ct. App. 1975), rev'd on other grounds, 265 Ind. 457, 358 N.E.2d 974 (1976); Butz v. Werner, 438 N.W.2d at 517; Cunningham v. Charles Pfizer & Co., 532 P.2d 1377, 1382 (Okla. 1974); Menard v. Newhall, 135 Vt. 53, 373 A.2d 505 (1977); 3 American Law of Products Liability § 32:74 (3d ed. 1987). A growing minority of courts refuse to declare a presumption but nevertheless affirm jury verdicts for plaintiffs on the theory that the jury reasonably could have inferred from the evidence that the plaintiff would have heeded a warning. Raney v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 897 F.2d 94, 95-96 (2d Cir.1990) (applying New York law); Skonberg v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., 215 Ill. App.3d 735, 159 Ill.Dec. 359, 363-64, 576 N.E.2d 28, 32-33, appeal denied, 141 Ill.2d 561, 162 Ill.Dec. 509, 580 N.E.2d 135 (1991). In practice, courts adopting this reasonable-inference or fact-intensive view have not required a great deal of evidence in order for an asbestos-case plaintiff to get to the jury. This Court has long recognized what has been labeled, perhaps unfortunately, as a presumption that persons exercise ordinary care for their own safety. See Nizer v. Phelps, 252 Md. 185, 205, 249 A.2d 112, 123 (1969); Baltimore Transit Co. v. State ex rel. Castranda, 194 Md. 421, 434, 71 A.2d 442, 447 (1950); State ex rel. Pachmayr v. Baltimore & O.R.R., 157 Md. 256, 262, 145 A. 611, 613-14 (1929); Lozzi v. Pennsylvania R.R., 152 Md. 508, 510, 137 A. 293, 293 (1927); Baltimore & O.R.R. v. Stumpf, 97 Md. 78, 91, 54 A. 978, 980 (1903); Tucker v. State ex rel. Johnson, 89 Md. 471, 480, 43 A. 778, 781 (1899). The presumption of due care arises from the natural instinct of human beings to guard against danger, Castranda, 194 Md. at 434, 71 A.2d at 447, which has also been described as the known and ordinary disposition of persons to guard themselves against danger, Tucker, 89 Md. at 480, 43 A. at 781. Applying this Maryland concept to the instant asbestos products litigation means that direct evidence that plaintiffs' decedents would have heeded adequate warnings was not an essential element of the plaintiffs' case. The Maryland presumption at a minimum means that jurors are entitled to bring to their deliberations their knowledge of the natural instinct and disposition of persons to guard themselves against danger. In the smattering of cases where the argument has been made that a plaintiff would not have heeded a warning, if given, the argument has been based on particular evidence bearing on the characteristics of the specific person who was injured. See Raney, 897 F.2d 94 and Skonberg, 159 Ill.Dec. 359, 576 N.E.2d 28. Those arguments were unsuccessful. Here there was no evidence that the personalities or dispositions of the particular decedents were such that they clearly would have ignored warnings. The other prong of the defendants' causation argument looks not to the particular decedents but to whether the hypothetical warnings would have been communicated to the decedents, who were not direct users of the asbestos products. There was evidence, for example, that Eagle placed caution notices on packages of its cement beginning in 1964, and that safety measures regarding asbestos dust were not enforced by Bethlehem as a matter of management policy until sometime in the 1970s when government inspectors required compliance with occupational health laws. Defendants argue that if the insulators did not wear respirators after warnings were placed on products or product containers, bystanders would have no way of learning, as a result of the warning, that there was a hazard. That evidence does not require judgment on motion for the defendants. The hypothetical causation scenario contemplates all defendant suppliers having given warnings, and having done so beginning more than two decades before 1964. All of the facts and inferences were submitted to the jury, which was instructed that if a warning would not have prevented the harm from occurring then a defendant who failed to warn is not responsible because the absence of warning could not have been or would not have been a cause of the injury. The jury concluded that a warning would have been efficacious. When dealing, necessarily, with hypotheticals, we cannot say that that conclusion was impermissible as a matter of law.