Failure to Warn in Asbestos Cases

Decisions in our library in which the court ruled on duty to warn: 599 cases, by state. Each line gives what the court held, in our words; the law differs from state to state and changes, so read the opinion and talk to a lawyer before relying on any of them.

Illinois

• Hartman v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp. (5th District, 1994). Circumstantial evidence of regular exposure to the defendant's asbestos product over several months, together with medical evidence, can support an inference that the product probably caused mesothelioma. Trial courts keep discretion over sanctions for late expert disclosure under Rule 220, and a settlement may be allocated to a spouse who signed the releases, so that part is not set off against the verdict.
• Campbell v. AC Equipment Services Corporation, Inc. (4th District, 1993). A complaint seeking recovery for asbestos exposure under battery, emotional distress, negligence or wilful and wanton theories must allege facts showing the defendants knew of the danger. Without such facts, intent, duty and conscious disregard are not pleaded.
• Kurrack v. American Dist. Telegraph Co. (1st District, 5th Division, 1993). A strict liability claim based on an inherent defect in an asbestos-containing product requires proof that the product left the defendant's control in an unreasonably dangerous condition, such as releasing friable asbestos; the presence of asbestos alone does not establish a defect. A failure-to-warn claim requires proof the defendant knew or should have known of the danger.
• State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. WR Grace & Co. (1993). The Illinois construction statute of repose protects a product manufacturer only if it substantially participated in construction activities or custom-made and installed its product for the project, and only for claims arising from those construction activities, not manufacturing-related negligence such as failure to warn.
• Betts v. Manville Personal Injury Trust (4th District, 1992). A new trial was required because of plaintiffs' counsel's prejudicial tactics, an undisclosed expert, speculative cancer-risk evidence, evidence from another plant not shown to be similar, and over-broad collateral estoppel against Grefco. A prior finding fixing when a plaintiff learned of her injury can bar a later suit on limitations grounds, and a plaintiff who gets no allocation of an earlier settlement bears the burden on the setoff.
• Board of Education v. A, C & S, Inc. (1989). Friable asbestos-containing material contaminating a building can be pleaded as physical damage to other property, so tort claims are not barred by the economic loss doctrine. School districts suing to recover abatement costs assert a public right and are not subject to the statutes of limitations.

Iowa

• Van Fossen v. MidAmerican Energy Co. (2009). One who employs an independent contractor owes no general duty of reasonable care to a household member of the contractor's employee, and owes only the limited duties under Restatement (Second) of Torts sections 413, 416 and 427, which were not triggered here.
• Fossen v. Midamerican Energy Company (2008). Iowa courts weigh the relationship between the parties, foreseeability of harm and public policy; on that analysis a landowner owes no duty to the spouse of an independent contractor's employee who carried asbestos fibers home from the premises.
• Huber v. Watson (1997). In a legal malpractice suit over an asbestos case, the plaintiff must show the underlying suit would have succeeded. Contract specifications naming asbestos products, together with evidence of the manufacturers' corporate successors, gave a jury enough to find product exposure and proximate cause. The state-of-the-art defense does not bar failure-to-warn claims based on later-acquired knowledge.
• Spaur v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (1994). Asbestos plaintiffs may prove causation under a flexible substantial-factor test, with circumstantial evidence of exposure to the defendant's product, without proving how much that product contributed to the disease. Punitive damages in asbestos cases are not per se unconstitutional, and the defendant bears the burden of showing a due process violation.
• Beeman v. Manville Corp. Asbestos Fund (1993). Evidence of cancer risk from asbestos is admissible to show a manufacturer's duty to warn and the reasonableness of a plaintiff's fear of cancer, and proof of exposure plus cumulative-effect expert testimony can create a jury question on proximate cause. Knowledge sufficient to trigger a duty to warn does not by itself support punitive damages, and Iowa law does not allow a separate award for lost opportunity to live out a full life expectancy.

Kansas

• Little v. Budd Company (2018). General-causation expert testimony that asbestos causes mesothelioma and is dose-responsive is admissible under Rule 702 and Daubert when the expert offers no opinion on the plaintiff's specific causation. A historian of asbestos knowledge may describe the development of knowledge about its hazards but may not testify about what a particular defendant knew or should have known.

Kentucky

• Hayes v. Colgate-Palmolive Company (2021). A corporate representative's testimony about personal and family use of the company's product is irrelevant to the company's knowledge for punitive damages and unduly prejudicial under KRE 403. A scientific article is admissible under KRE 703 or 803(18) only if the testifying experts actually relied on it, not merely because it is reliable.
• Surita v. Arvinmeritor, Inc. (2017). Under Kentucky law, negligence, strict liability, warranty and misrepresentation claims all require proof that each defendant's product was a substantial factor in causing the harm, meaning a probable rather than merely possible cause.
• Durham v. Ford Motor Company (2014). A premises owner has a duty to warn independent contractors' employees of asbestos only if it knew of the danger and the contractor lacked actual or constructive knowledge, and the plaintiff bears the burden of proving that. Under Kentucky's up-the-ladder immunity, an owner is immune for work that is regular or recurrent to its business.
• McGuire v. Lorillard Tobacco Company (2014). Negligent design and negligent failure-to-warn claims were subsumed in a strict liability instruction, so separate negligence instructions were unnecessary. Workers' compensation exclusivity covers only diseases arising out of employment. An erroneous instruction on that point was harmless because no reasonable possibility existed that it affected the verdict.
• Certainteed Corporation v. Dexter (2010). A participating defendant that wants fault apportioned to an empty-chair defendant must prove that defendant's liability, just as it would have to be proved against a participating defendant. A trial court's finding that a verdict is not sustained by sufficient evidence is reviewed for clear error, and its decision to grant a new trial is reviewed for abuse of discretion, with great deference to the trial court.
• Cardinal Industrial Insulation Co., Inc. v. Norris (2009). Under Kentucky's substantial factor test, a plaintiff must show that the defendant's asbestos work probably, not merely possibly, exposed him; fiber drift is expert evidence rather than a causation test and cannot alone support liability without proof of proximity. A claim of professional negligence against an engineer requires expert testimony on the standard of care.
• Parker v. Henry A. Petter Supply Co. (2005). Kentucky's middleman statute applies to distributors once the manufacturer is identified and subject to the court's jurisdiction, even if the manufacturer is bankrupt or other manufacturers are unnamed; but the distributor's knowledge of the defect is a fact question that needs discovery. A purchaser of a corporation's assets is not a successor unless it continues the seller's ownership or management.
• Strickland v. Owens Corning (1998). A jury's allocation of fault must have evidentiary support, and an allocation to a distributor exceeding that of the manufacturer and all other companies combined was against the weight of the evidence. Remittitur may be used to correct such a malapportionment of fault.
• Capital Holding Corp. v. Bailey (1994). A negligence claim for asbestos exposure does not accrue, and no damages for increased risk or fear of cancer are available, until the plaintiff shows some harmful result from the exposure. The tort of outrageous conduct is intentional, needs no physical contact or injury, and a failure to comply strictly with the prehearing statement rule (CR 76.03) is not grounds to withdraw a decided issue.

Louisiana

• Alford v. Taylor-Seidenbach, Inc. (2025). Under Louisiana law before the Products Liability Act, an OSHA-compliant asbestos warning is not automatically adequate, and whether a warning was adequate is a jury question. Exposure to a particular asbestos product may be shown by circumstantial evidence.
• LeBOEUF v. Huntington Ingalls, Incorporated (2025). A federal contractor is immune from failure-to-warn claims under the modified Boyle test only if the government exercised discretion and approved the warnings, and minimum government safety standards are not reasonably precise specifications. Yearsley immunity does not cover a failure to warn or protect that the government did not authorize or direct.
• Gomez v. Huntington Ingalls Inc. (2024). Avondale cannot invoke the Boyle or Yearsley government contractor defenses against failure-to-warn and failure-to-enact-safety-measures claims, following earlier decisions of the same court. A party seeking more discovery before summary judgment must show the discovery will likely create a genuine issue of material fact.
• Matherne v. Huntington Ingalls Incorporated (2024). Whether an intermediary purchaser was a sophisticated user, relieving the manufacturer of a duty to warn under Louisiana law, turns on its actual or constructive knowledge of the danger. That is a state-of-mind question usually left to the jury, so it was not suited to summary judgment on this record.
• Matherne v. Huntington Ingalls Incorporated (2024). For the failure-to-warn and failure-to-implement-safety-measures claims, the court followed its earlier Falgout ruling and barred the shipyard and its insurers from asserting the government contractor defense (Boyle/Yearsley). The plaintiffs did not seek judgment on the strict liability or general negligence claims.
• King v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. (2023). Under Louisiana law, an asbestos plaintiff must show significant exposure to the defendant's product and that the exposure was a substantial factor in causing the injury. Even when a motion is unopposed, the movant must show it is entitled to judgment.
• Adams v. Eagle, Inc. (2022). The Boyle defense to a failure-to-warn claim requires government-approved warnings or a reasonably precise government specification, and a minimum safety standard like the Walsh-Healey Act is not one. Yearsley immunity does not protect a contractor from claims of its own separate negligence in carrying out a government contract.
• Becnel v. Lamorak Insurance Co. (2022). Under Louisiana law, a plaintiff opposing summary judgment need only show that a reasonable jury could find it more likely than not that he inhaled the defendant's asbestos fibers, however slight the exposure, and experts need not calculate a dose for each defendant. A manufacturer may owe a duty to warn when its product requires asbestos-containing parts or insulation to function as intended.
• Cortez v. Lamorak Ins. Co. (2022). Under Louisiana law as applied by the Fifth Circuit, a manufacturer has no duty to warn the employees of a sophisticated purchaser, and a purchaser need not know the specific disease the product can cause. Whether chrysotile is less potent than other asbestos types is a fact question for the jury, not a ground for summary judgment.
• Cortez v. Lamorak Ins. Co. (2022). Under pre-LPLA Louisiana law, a turbine maker can be liable for asbestos gaskets it supplied or specified as component parts, and slight exposures can suffice for substantial-factor causation. It has no duty to warn about, and no design liability for, asbestos insulation that others made and applied to its turbines.
• Cortez v. Lamorak Insurance Company (2022). An expert's testimony is admissible if relevant to a pending issue, such as a shipyard's knowledge of asbestos hazards for a sophisticated-purchaser defense, but testimony on issues already resolved by summary judgment or outside the expert's field is excluded.
• Cortez v. Lamorak Insurance Company (2022). An expert may not give legal conclusions, so an industrial hygienist cannot testify that a supplier is a manufacturer or professional vendor under Louisiana law, though he may say he would look to the company named on the product for hazard information.
• Cortez v. Lamorak Insurance Company (2022). Under Louisiana law a plaintiff must show significant exposure to the defendant's asbestos product, and a deceased father's out-of-court statements about where he worked are hearsay not covered by the Rule 804(b)(4) family-history exception. A manufacturer has no duty to warn of dangers of a third party's asbestos insulation it did not make, sell, specify or recommend, but may be liable if it supplied or specified asbestos gaskets.
• Crossland v. Huntington Ingalls, Inc. (2022). Under the Fifth Circuit's modified Boyle test for failure-to-warn claims, a contractor must show the government exercised discretion over the warnings. Yearsley immunity covers only acts authorized and directed by the government, not separate negligence in workplace safety and warnings.
• Falgout v. Anco Insulations, Inc. (2022). A contractor asserting the Boyle defense to failure-to-warn and failure-to-prevent-spread claims must show the government exercised discretion in approving specific warnings or precise specifications; minimum safety standards are not enough. Yearsley does not shield a contractor's own negligence that is separate from the acts the government authorized.
• Hotard v. Avondale Industries, Inc. (2022). A vessel owner that required asbestos-containing materials in construction, and knew the risk without warning, may owe a duty to a contractor's employees. An owner of premises under construction can have custody under Louisiana Civil Code article 2317 if it authorizes unsafe practices.
• Labarre v. Bienville Auto Parts Inc. (2022). Under Louisiana law, a seller that did not hold products out as its own or control their design or quality is not a manufacturer or professional vendor strictly liable for them. A non-manufacturer seller can still be liable in negligence if it knew or should have known the product was dangerous, and whether a user is sophisticated is ordinarily a fact question.
• Reulet v. Lamorak Ins. Co. (2022). Under Air & Liquid Systems v. DeVries, a manufacturer may have a duty to warn when its product requires an asbestos part and it knows the integrated product is likely dangerous, even if it did not supply the part; slight exposures suffice to create a fact dispute on exposure.
• Bouck v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co. (2021). The Locomotive Inspection Act's preemption of state-law claims against locomotive parts manufacturers (Kurns) does not preclude a railroad worker's FELA negligence claim against his employer for asbestos exposure from locomotives and locomotive parts.
• Broussard v. Huntington Ingalls, Inc. (2021). The government contractor defense to a failure-to-warn claim requires evidence that the federal government was involved in the decision to give or not give a warning and that the contractor complied with the government's warning provisions. Avondale offered no such evidence.
• Lopez v. McDERMOTT, Inc. (2020). A deceased plaintiff's deposition testimony is admissible against a defendant who was absent if other defendants present had a similar motive and opportunity to cross-examine him. Whether a valve maker had a duty to warn about asbestos gaskets used with its valves depends on disputed facts, and the Supreme Court's DeVries decision was treated as instructive outside maritime law.
• Latiolais v. Huntington Ingalls, Incorporated (2019). Under binding circuit precedent (Bartel, Legendre), federal officer removal requires a causal nexus between actions taken under federal direction and the plaintiff's claims, and negligent failure-to-warn claims about asbestos do not meet it where the government did not control the shipyard's safety practices. A panel cannot overrule that precedent despite the 2011 "relating to" amendment.
• Brown v. Avondale Industries, Inc. (2018). Federal officer removal under 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1) requires a causal nexus between the federal officer's direction and the challenged conduct, and negligence claims for failure to warn or adopt safety procedures for asbestos do not meet it under Fifth Circuit precedent.
• Burkart v. PPG Industries, Inc. (2018). Following its decision in Guillot, the court held that Avondale did not show a causal nexus between the federal requirement to use asbestos-containing materials and its ability to comply with state-law duties to warn and safeguard, so federal officer removal failed.
• Guillot v. Avondale Industries, Inc. (2018). Federal officer removal under 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1) still requires a causal nexus between the defendant's conduct under federal direction and the plaintiff's claims. The 2011 "relating to" amendment did not change this under binding Fifth Circuit precedent, and federal direction to use asbestos does not reach failure-to-warn or safety claims when the government did not control safety.
• Latiolais v. Huntington Ingalls Incorporated (2018). Under the federal officer removal statute, a shipyard sued only in negligence for its own safety practices must show the federal government controlled those practices to establish a causal nexus. A government requirement to use asbestos is not enough.
• Melancon v. Lamorak Insurance Company (2018). To remove under the federal officer removal statute, a defendant must show a causal nexus between the government's direction and the charged conduct. Negligent failure to warn, train and adopt safety procedures about asbestos is private conduct that implicates no federal interest, so it does not meet that requirement.
• Templet v. Huntington Ingalls, Incorporated (2018). Negligence claims for failure to warn, train or adopt asbestos safety procedures do not show the causal nexus needed for federal officer removal when the defendant does not show it was prevented from adopting those safety measures.
• Uzee v. Huntington Ingalls Incorporated (2018). Under Fifth Circuit precedent, federal officer removal's causal nexus is met for strict liability claims based on mere use of asbestos required by government contracts, but not for negligent failure to warn, train or adopt safety procedures; plaintiffs who disclaim strict liability cannot be forced into such claims.