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Becker v. Baron Bros.11/15/1994
The opinion of the court was delivered by
CLIFFORD, J.
On the strength of Beshada v. Johns-Manville Products Corp., 90 N.J. 191, 447 A.2d 539 (1982), the Appellate Division ruled that all asbestos products marketed without warnings are defective as a matter of law. It therefore affirmed the judgment of the Law Division, entered on a verdict by a jury that had been instructed that that was the law.
We granted the petitions for certification of defendant General Motors Corp., 134 N.J. 476 (1993), and of defendant Englewood Brake Company, Inc., N.J. (1994), and now reverse.
I
Albert Becker was diagnosed in October 1984 as having contracted mesothelioma, a rare form of incurable cancer that affects the pleural membrane, the layer of cells surrounding the lungs and the chest cavity. He and his wife commenced this strict-liability, toxic-tort action in November 1985, seeking recovery from various miners, manufacturers, and sellers for personal injuries and consequent losses that they had sustained because of Becker's exposure to asbestos-containing products. After Albert Becker's death from mesothelioma at age fifty-five, in the course of this litigation, his wife added a count for her husband's wrongful death. Although she is correctly denominated the plaintiff, reference henceforth in this opinion to "plaintiff" is to Albert.
Plaintiff worked as an automobile mechanic for various employers from 1953 to 1967. In that year he opened his own service station, Tenafly Getty, which he operated until 1985. Throughout much of his career as a mechanic, Becker performed approximately one to five brake jobs per week and one to four clutch jobs per month. The products he used to perform those jobs did not provide any warnings regarding asbestos exposure until sometime around 1975, when manufacturers apparently began putting warnings on some of their products. Plaintiff was exposed to dust allegedly containing chrysotile-asbestos fibers as the result of his work in the following ways: (1) through removal of old parts from cars to replace them with new ones, which caused dust to come off the old parts near his face; (2) through using a wire brush to clean the dust out of the parts or through washing the dust off the parts, which caused the dust eventually to settle to the floor, to dry, and to float around in his shop; (3) through sanding parts with grease on them, which caused dust to come off the brakes; and (4) through watching one of his distributors grind old parts on a lathe during the remanufacturing process, thereby releasing dust into the air.
All but three defendants, United Motor Parts, Inc., Englewood Brake Company, Inc. (Englewood Brake), and General Motors Corp. (General Motors) settled or were dismissed prior to trial. At the close of the case, plaintiff asked the court to rule that "an asbestos[-]containing friction product [that] is friable is defective as a matter of law if it contains no warnings." Because the court believed that all asbestos products without warnings are defective, it agreed with plaintiff's position. The court stated that whether processed chrysotile asbestos can cause mesothelioma "is a proximate cause defense. It has nothing to do with whether * * * a product that contains asbestos, more specifically chrysotile, can be marketed without a warning and be considered not defective." The court therefore told the jury before the attorneys' closing arguments:
I've already ruled as a matter of law that some of the asbestos[-]containing friction products that were manufactured, sold and distributed by some of the defendants constituted an unsafe product.
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