Opinion ID: 1481786
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Eagle's Duty to Warn

Text: Eagle submits that it had no duty to warn in Balbos where the decedent's exposure to asbestos began in 1942 and ended in 1944. The general concept which Eagle invokes is that too little was known about the health hazards of asbestos prior to 1944 so that a court must declare, as a matter of law, that due care could not require warnings. [6] Eagle, however, seeks further to limit that analysis to knowledge of asbestos-induced mesothelioma in persons who did not work directly with asbestos products. Eagle's position is factually unsupported at the level of the general concept, and it is legally incorrect at the level of specific application. [7] Eagle is a manufacturer. A manufacturer is liable for failure to exercise reasonable care in the manufacture of a chattel which, unless carefully made, he should recognize as involving an unreasonable risk of causing physical harm to those who use it.... Restatement (Second) of Torts § 395. For purposes of applying the should have known component of the foregoing standard, a manufacturer of a product is held to the knowledge of an expert in the field. Babylon v. Scruton, 215 Md. 299, 304, 138 A.2d 375, 378 (1958) (negligence). The manufacturer `must keep reasonably abreast of scientific knowledge and discoveries touching his product....' Id. (quoting Harper & James, The Law of Torts § 28.4). Here Dr. Castleman, the plaintiffs' principal expert on state of the art, traced the scientific literature beginning in 1898 (with the exception of one reference to the Roman historian, Pliny) through 1941. He brought to court and described in his testimony approximately forty pre-1942 articles dealing with the health risks of asbestos which appeared in scientific, industrial, and governmental publications. He said there were at least 200 articles that had appeared [up to 1942], probably more like three hundred.... But if you count things like National Safety Council publications that talked about lung diseases and mentioned asbestosis, as well as articles solely devoted to asbestosis and cancer from asbestosis, well, then, you'd be well over 200. One of the works referred to by Dr. Castleman was an encyclopedia, Occupation and Health, published by the International Labor Office in Geneva circa 1930. It contained a section on asbestos which included a subsection headed Dangers and Hygiene. It referred to the refusal by American and Canadian life insurance companies to insure asbestos workers because of assumed deleterious conditions in the industry, a fact that had been reported in 1918 in a United States government publication. Two doctors in England prepared a fifteen page article on asbestosis as part of a 1938 supplement to the encyclopedia. That article was read by an Eagle sales representative, H.M. Aber, when calling on the Texas State Board of Health in April 1942. In a written report to Eagle, circulated to at least three persons in that corporation, the sales representative, referring to the article, said: If you think mineral wool is dangerous you should read this, and I urge you to read this as it is very informative. Eagle's response to the state of the art literature is that it does not sufficiently alert a manufacturer to a connection between asbestos and mesothelioma in bystanders. That is not the correct unit of consideration. In Moran v. Faberge, 273 Md. 538, 332 A.2d 11 (1975), the issue was whether the manufacturer of a flammable cologne was liable for the failure to warn of the product's flammability when the product had been ignited because a teenager had sprinkled a lighted candle with the cologne. We said that `the pertinent inquiry is not whether the actual harm was of a particular kind which was expectable. Rather, the question is whether the actual harm fell within a general field of danger which should have been anticipated. ' Id. at 551, 332 A.2d at 19 (quoting Segerman v. Jones, 256 Md. 109, 132, 259 A.2d 794, 805 (1969)) (quoting McLeod v. Grant County School Dist., 42 Wash.2d 316, 321, 255 P.2d 360, 363 (1953)). Moran also pointed out that ` foreseeability refers to the general type of harm sustained. It is literally true that there is no liability for damage that falls entirely outside the general threat of harm which made the conduct of the actor negligent.... [I]f the harm suffered falls within the general danger area, there may be liability, provided other requisites of legal causation are present.' Id. at 551-52, 332 A.2d at 19 (emphasis added in Moran opinion) (quoting Harper, A Treatise on the Law of Torts § 7 (1933)). See also Restatement (Second) of Torts § 435, comment a (The fact that the actor, at the time of his negligent conduct, neither realized nor should have realized that it might cause harm to another of the particular kind or in the particular manner in which the harm has in fact occurred, is not of itself sufficient to prevent him from being liable for the other's harm if his conduct was negligent toward the other and was a substantial factor in bringing about the harm.). While the fact that ultimate harm suffered by Balbos would take the form of mesothelioma rather than asbestosis could not have been foreseen by Eagle, this distinction will not preclude liability. In the matter before us the jury could find that Eagle knew or should have known of the hazard of lung disease produced by inhaling asbestos fibers. Mesothelioma is a form of lung disease caused by inhaling asbestos fibers. There was sufficient evidence to support a finding that Eagle had a duty to warn.