Opinion ID: 844228
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiffs' Authorities Are Distinguishable

Text: The Court of Appeal here disagreed with Taylor and ignored the out-of-state decisions discussed above. Instead, the court relied on its own prior decision in Tellez-Cordova v. Campbell-Hausfeld/Scott Fetzger Co. (2004) 129 Cal.App.4th 577 [28 Cal.Rptr.3d 744] ( Tellez-Cordova ), and two other Court of Appeal opinions, as support for its conclusion that a manufacturer is liable in strict liability for the dangerous components of its products, and for dangerous products with which its product will necessarily be used.  (Italics added.) The reliance is misplaced. These cases do not support the broad expansion of strict liability law proposed in the second clause of the Court of Appeal's holding. In DeLeon v. Commercial Manufacturing & Supply Co. (1983) 148 Cal.App.3d 336, 340 [195 Cal.Rptr. 867] ( DeLeon ), the question was whether custom-made factory equipment which is safe to use in some locations [is] `defective' because in a particular location its use may bring the operator in contact with an adjacent rotating line shaft built and maintained by the plant owners. DeLeon was injured when she was cleaning the defendant's shaker bin and her arm became tangled in an exposed rotating line shaft located above the bin. ( Id. at pp. 340-341.) She sued both her employer, which had designed and installed the line shaft, and the manufacturer of the shaker bin. On appeal from the manufacturer's dismissal on summary judgment, the court found a triable issue of fact regarding whether the bin's designed proximity to the line shaft presented an `excessive preventable danger.' ( Id. at p. 344.) Because the intended use of the bin included periodic cleaning, the court reasoned that the bin's dimensions and its placement near an exposed line shaft arguably constituted design defects and gave rise to a duty to warn. ( Id. at pp. 346, 348-349.) In some respects, DeLeon 's facts resemble those presented here. Like DeLeon, O'Neil suffered a foreseeable injury not from defendant's product, but from another manufacturer's product located nearby. An important difference, however, is that the bin manufacturer in DeLeon was heavily involved in creating the dangerous condition that gave rise to the plaintiff's injury. DeLeon's injury resulted not from any intrinsic defect in the bin or the line shaft, but in the dangerous proximity of these two products. The bin manufacturer contributed to this dangerous condition because it designed the bin specifically for use in the particular site where it was located. ( DeLeon, supra, 148 Cal.App.3d at pp. 341-342, 345.) The bin's designer visited the site but never noticed the shaft overhead, did not know what it was, and did not investigate to determine whether it presented a safety hazard. ( Id. at p. 341.) The DeLeon court itself observed that the case did not pose a clear-cut legal question of component part liability, but instead presented a factual issue of [the manufacturer's] involvement in design which will permit variations in the applicable rules of law depending upon how the trier of fact determines the extent of [the manufacturer's] design responsibility. ( DeLeon, supra, 148 Cal.App.3d at p. 343.) The case is distinguishable on its facts and offers no rule of law supporting plaintiffs' position. There is nothing in DeLeon that suggests that a manufacturer may be liable for failing to warn of the dangerous qualities of another manufacturer's product. ( Taylor, supra, 171 Cal.App.4th at pp. 589-590.) Plaintiffs' reliance on Wright v. Stang Manufacturing Co. (1997) 54 Cal.App.4th 1218 [63 Cal.Rptr.2d 422] likewise fails. Firefighter Wright was injured when a deck gun he was using broke loose from its mounting assembly under high water pressure. ( Id. at pp. 1222-1223.) Even though the deck gun itself did not break or fail in the accident, the Court of Appeal found a triable issue as to whether the gun was defectively designed because it did not include a flange mounting system and was not compatible for use with this safer mounting system. ( Id. at p. 1229.) The court also concluded that the deck gun manufacturer could be liable for failing to warn users about the danger that could result from a foreseeable mismatch of the deck gun with inadequate attachment parts. ( Id. at p. 1236.) Wright is factually distinguishable because the plaintiff was injured due to a failure of the entire deck gun assembly, of which the defendant's product was a component part. His injury was not traceable to a single product made by another manufacturer; it was allegedly caused by a foreseeable failure of the entire system to withstand high water pressure. An interpretation of Wright that would require a manufacturer to warn about all potentially hazardous conditions surrounding the use of a product, even when those hazards arise entirely from the product of another manufacturer, reaches too far. There is no precedent in California law for such a broad expansion of a product manufacturer's duty. Finally, the Court of Appeal below maintained that the result here was controlled by its prior decision in Tellez-Cordova, supra, 129 Cal.App.4th 577. We disagree. Tellez-Cordova is distinguishable on its facts, and its holding does not create a broader duty for manufacturers to warn about hazards arising solely from other products. Tellez-Cordova developed lung disease from breathing toxic substances released from metals he cut and sanded and from abrasive discs on the power tools he used. ( Tellez-Cordova, supra, 129 Cal.App.4th at p. 579.) He sued manufacturers of these tools, arguing they were specifically designed to be used with abrasive discs for grinding and sanding metals, and it was therefore reasonably foreseeable that toxic dust would be released into the air when the tools were used for their intended purpose. ( Id. at p. 580.) Relying on Garman v. Magic Chef, Inc., supra, 117 Cal.App.3d 634, and Powell v. Standard Brands Paint Co., supra, 166 Cal.App.3d 357, the tool manufacturers argued California law imposed no duty on them to warn of hazards in the product of another. ( Tellez-Cordova, at p. 585.) The tools themselves released no hazardous dust; the dust came from the abrasive discs that were attached to the tools and the metals they contacted. However, the Court of Appeal remarked that this argument misse[d] the point, because the intended purpose of the tools was to abrade surfaces, and toxic dust was a foreseeable byproduct of this activity. According to the complaint's allegations, the tools had no function without the abrasives which disintegrated into toxic dust, and the abrasive products were not dangerous without the power of the tools. ( Ibid. ) The facts in Tellez-Cordova differed from the present case in two significant respects. First, the power tools in Tellez-Cordova could only be used in a potentially injury-producing manner. Their sole purpose was to grind metals in a process that inevitably produced harmful dust. In contrast, the normal operation of defendants' pumps and valves did not inevitably cause the release of asbestos dust. This is true even if normal operation is defined broadly to include the dusty activities of routine repair and maintenance, because the evidence did not establish that defendants' products needed asbestos-containing components or insulation to function properly. It was the Navy that decided to apply asbestos-containing thermal insulation to defendants' products and to replace worn gaskets and packing with asbestos-containing components. Second, it was the action of the power tools in Tellez-Cordova that caused the release of harmful dust, even though the dust itself emanated from another substance. Tellez-Cordova is arguably an example of a case where the combination of one sound product with another sound product creates a dangerous condition about which the manufacturer of each product has a duty to warn [citation]. ( Rastelli, supra, 591 N.E.2d at p. 226.) The same is not true here. The asbestos dust that injured O'Neil came from thermal insulation and replacement gaskets and packing made by other manufacturers. Nothing about defendants' pumps and valves caused or contributed to the release of this dust. The Court of Appeal here characterized Tellez-Cordova as holding that a manufacturer is liable when its product is necessarily used in conjunction with another product, and when danger results from the use of the two products together. In this case, neither requirement was met. Defendants' pumps and valves were not necessarily used with asbestos components, and danger did not result from the use of these products together. The hazardous dust to which O'Neil was exposed resulted entirely from work performed on asbestos products that defendants did not manufacture, sell, or supply. The Court of Appeal's extension of Tellez-Cordova beyond its unique factual context could easily lead to absurd results. It would require match manufacturers to warn about the dangers of igniting dynamite, for example. (16) Moreover, as noted, California law does not impose a duty to warn about dangers arising entirely from another manufacturer's product, even if it is foreseeable that the products will be used together. Were it otherwise, manufacturers of the saws used to cut insulation would become the next targets of asbestos lawsuits. Recognizing a duty to warn was appropriate in Tellez-Cordova because there the defendant's product was intended to be used with another product for the very activity that created a hazardous situation. (17) Where the intended use of a product inevitably creates a hazardous situation, it is reasonable to expect the manufacturer to give warnings. Conversely, where the hazard arises entirely from another product, and the defendant's product does not create or contribute to that hazard, liability is not appropriate. We have not required manufacturers to warn about all foreseeable harms that might occur in the vicinity of their products. From its inception, ... strict liability has never been, and is not now, absolute liability. As has been repeatedly expressed, under strict liability the manufacturer does not thereby become the insurer of the safety of the product's user. [Citations.] ( Daly v. General Motors Corp., supra, 20 Cal.3d at p. 733.)