A Component Part Supplier’s Duty to Warn Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Maritime Asbestos Decision

Under the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 5, Comment b (1998), the supplier of a product generally must warn about only those risks associated with the product itself, not those associated with the “products and systems into which [it is] integrated.”

However, in Air and Liquid Sys. Corp. v. DeVries, 139 S. Ct. 986 (2019), the Supreme Court created a different rule in the context of maritime asbestos claims.  In that case, the defendants produced “bare-metal” equipment, such as pumps, blowers, and turbines, for Navy ships that required asbestos insulation or asbestos parts to function as intended.  The manufacturers delivered the equipment to the Navy without asbestos, and the Navy later added asbestos to the equipment.  Two Navy veterans were exposed to asbestos on the ships and developed cancer.  The district court granted summary judgment for the manufacturers, finding no duty to warn.  In reversing, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals adopted a “more plaintiff-friendly” foreseeability rule, rejecting the “more defendant-friendly” bare-metal defense.