June 29, 2018
Since 2009, Delaware courts have adhered to the “take home” asbestos exposure principles set forth in the prior decisions of Riedel and Price. In those cases, the Courts held that an employer could not be held liable in tort to the employee’s spouse who laundered his asbestos-covered clothes repeatedly for years, even though the employer controlled the conditions under which the employee was exposed to asbestos dust in the workplace. Based on these decisions, defendant-manufacturers have successfully argued that it is illogical to relieve an employer of liability to the employee’s spouse and hold manufacturers of asbestos products responsible when the employer shaped the work conditions under which the employee worked, was exposed to asbestos and carried the dust home to be laundered.
On June 27, 2018, the Delaware Supreme Court changed the fate for manufacturers seeking to escape liability in take home exposure claims. The Ramsey case involved the questions of whether a spouse who laundered the work clothing at home is a foreseeable plaintiff and, if so, what duty is owed by manufacturers of asbestos-containing products to spouses of employees working with these products.
The Delaware Supreme Court held that spouses of employees are foreseeable plaintiffs and manufacturers owe a general duty of care to all foreseeable persons. As such, the Court decided that since the manufacturer supplied asbestos-containing products and did not warn the employers of the dangers accompanying those products, they can be held liable to a take home plaintiff exposed from laundering employees’ clothes.
Although employers may not be exposed to damages liability because of workers’ compensation for injuries in the workplace, this does not absolve them of all duties of care to employees. In fact, employers have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to provide a safe workplace for its employees. This includes a duty to warn of at-home asbestos exposure on clothing or, in some cases, provide a laundry service at the place of employment to avoid take home exposures. An employer cannot be expected to warn its employees, however, when they themselves are unaware of dangers and the potential for a take home asbestos exposure.This decision now extends a duty to warn to employer defendants.However, an employer defendant may not be found liable if the employer can show it took steps to warn its employee, protected its employees, and addressed the potential hazards associated with asbestos exposure with its employees.
Further, the Ramsey case instructs manufacturers that they have a duty to warn foreseeable users of the dangers of its asbestos-containing products to the extent that the asbestos product manufacturer has actual or constructive knowledge of that danger, and when it is unlikely that the user will discover the dangerous condition. The Court does not impose this general duty without its limitations, however.
Though Mrs. Ramsey was determined to be a foreseeable plaintiff affected by the product manufacturers’ actions and should be entitled to recover, this does not mean that the manufacturers’ had a duty to warn her directly.The product manufacturers only had a reasonable duty of care to provide adequate warnings and safe laundering instructions to the employers. In that sense, manufacturers could have discharged their duty by warning employers. The Court further reasoned that this does not place an unreasonable burden on manufacturers and in turn encourages conduct that can feasibly be performed. Moreover, asbestos product manufacturers should generally be immune from liability if it provided sufficient warnings to the employer about the dangers of its asbestos product.
The Supreme Court of Delaware effectively revisits the holdings in the Riedel and Price cases. An employer engages in misfeasance, rather than nonfeasance, when it causes an employee to work with asbestos products under conditions in which asbestos dust covers the clothes he wears at the workplace and has laundered them at home. This logic extends to the manufacturer as well. The Court found that the nonfeasance in the instance of the employer or the manufacturer – the failure to warn – is culpable because a duty to warn arose when the employer or manufacturer engaged in a misfeasance exposing the employee to dangerous products.
The impact of this decision will extend liability to manufacturers and other similarly-situated tortfeasors engaging in behavior for which they have a reasonable duty to warn foreseeable users of products. Importantly, where a situation may seem like a nonfeasance, or, failure to act, it may in fact be the case that a misfeasance occurred prior, affirmatively establishing a duty, the breach of which causes a plaintiff’s harm. Importantly, the Ramsey decision only applies to plaintiffs whose exposure occurred in Delaware.If an asbestos claimant’s exposure occurred outside of Delaware and another state’s substantive law applies, the holding in Ramsey is inapplicable.