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United States Gypsum Co. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore9/12/1994
402 (1992), cert. denied, 113 S.Ct. 2936, 124 L.Ed.2d 686 (1993), quoting several earlier opinions, "'it is well settled that "when an objection is raised to a court's instruction,
attention should not be focused on a particular portion lifted out of context, but rather its adequacy is determined by viewing it as a whole."'" See, e.g., Collins v. State, 318 Md. 269, 283, 568 A.2d 1, 8, cert. denied, 497 U.S. 1032, 110 S.Ct. 3296, 111 L.Ed.2d 805 (1990); Bowers v. State, 298 Md. 115, 159, 468 A.2d 101, 124 (1983). Asbestospray, however, seizes upon particular parts of the trial court's instructions in isolation.
In its charge to the jury concerning state of the art in a negligence action, the trial court instructed as follows:
"A person who undertakes the manufacture or sale of a product . . . must keep reasonably abreast of scientific knowledge and discoveries touching this product. . . . Manufacturers and sellers are held to what they knew or what they should have known at the time the products were manufactured or sold. What they should have known refers to what is knowable and what is scientifically discoverable in the medical and scientific community.
"With regard to the negligence action, manufacturers and sellers are obligated to keep abreast of and are charged with knowing what other manufacturers and sellers knew about their products. The knowledge of one manufacturer can be a proper basis for concluding that another manufacturer should have warned of a specific danger."
In its charge under the strict liability count, the trial court stated:
"By state of the medical or scientific art, I mean what doctors or scientists generally accepted about a subject at a given time. The test is not what one doctor or even a group of doctors suspected at that time, but what the generally accepted view of the medical and scientific community was at the time that their products were sold."
"In considering this state of the art evidence, the issue for you to decide is when, if ever, the state of the generally accepted medical and scientific knowledge advanced to the point where the defendants had sufficient medical and scientific
information available to them from which you believe they should have concluded that the asbestos-containing products installed in the City buildings presented an unreasonable risk of harm to building occupants and workers."
Asbestospray characterizes the instructions as "inconsistent" in that "in the negligence context, the Court described 'state of the art' to include . . . attribution of knowledge from one manufacturer to the other," but that "'state of the art' in the strict liability context was given a much narrower definition." (Asbestospray's brief at 41-42). Despite the fact that the two instructions were worded differently, we perceive no inconsistency and no confusion.
It is well established in Maryland that a manufacturer of a product is held responsible for knowing what was generally known in the scientific or expert community about the product's hazards. This principle applies in negligence actions, Eagle-Picher v. Balbos, supra, 326 Md. at 194-195, 604 A.2d at 452 (a manufacturer has a duty to keep abreast of scientific knowledge and discoveries regarding its product); Babylon v. Scruton, 215 Md. 299, 304, 138 A.2d 375, 378 (1958) (in negligence action, a manufacturer will be held to the knowledge of an expert in the field), and it applies in strict liability actions, Owens-Illinoi
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