Question: ANDERSON v. OWENS-CORNING FIBERGLAS CORP., 810 P.2D 549 (CAL. 1991)
FACTS Carl Anderson filed a suit in strict liability against Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. and other manufacturers of products containing asbestos, alleging that he had contracted asbestosis and other lung ailments through exposure to asbestos and asbestos products while working at a naval shipyard from 1946 to 1976. His complaint alleged that the defendants were liable in strict liability for failing to warn the users of the risk of danger associated with asbestos and asbestos-containing products. The defendants responded by raising the state-of-the-art defense; i.e., "that even those at the vanguard of scientific know ledge at the time the products were sold could not have known that asbestos was dangerous to users in the concentrations associated with defendants' products." DECISION The California Supreme Court ruled that: "Exclusion of state-of-the-art evidence, when the basis of liability is a failure to warn, would make a manufacturer the virtual insurer of its product's safe use, a result that is not-consonant with established principles underlying strict liability."
The court stated that public policy grounds supported such an outcome: "[I]f a manufacturer could not count on limiting its liability to risks that were known or knowable at the time of manufacture or distribution, it would be discouraged from developing new and improved products for fear that later significant advances in scientific knowledge would increase its liability." Thus, the court held that "a defendant in a strict products liability action based upon an alleged failure to warn of a risk of harm may present evidence of the state of the art, i.e., evidence that the particular risk was neither known nor knowable by the application of scientific knowledge available at the time of manufacture and/or distribution."