Included In This Update:
- Massachusetts Federal District Court Holds Employer Was Sophisticated User and Dismisses Former Employee’s Claims Against Manufacturers and Suppliers of Beryllium-Containing Products
- Massachusetts Federal District Court Dismisses Claims Against Pharmaceutical Skin Cream Manufacturer for Lack of Expert Testimony of Design Defect, Failure to Warn or Proximate Cause
- Massachusetts Federal District Court Holds Plaintiff Not Responsible for Loss of Allegedly Negligently-Manufactured Sandal, Denies Summary Judgment Based on Inference of Negligence Under Res Ipsa Loquitor Doctrine
- Massachusetts Superior Court Dismisses Claims Against Bicycling Equipment Manufacturer and Supplier for Lack of Expert Testimony of Design Defect, Failure to Warn and Proximate Cause
- Massachusetts Superior Court Holds Presence of Defendant’s Trademark on Product Creates Triable Issue Whether Defendant Manufactured Product But Does Not Determine Issue as a Matter of Law
Excerpt:
Massachusetts Federal District Court Holds Employer Was Sophisticated User and Dismisses Former Employee’s Claims Against Manufacturers and Suppliers of Beryllium-Containing Products
In Genereux v. American Beryllia Corp., 2007 WL 3024787 (D. Mass. 2007), plaintiff contracted chronic beryllium disease (CBD) as a result of working with berylliumcontaining products supplied to her former employer by defendants. She asserted claims in the Massachusetts Superior Court for negligence, breach of warranty, fraudulent concealment, violation of Mass. Gen. L. ch. 93A (the Massachusetts unfair and deceptive trade practices statute) and loss of consortium. Defendants removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and sought summary judgment.
Defendants first argued that the statute of limitations barred all of plaintiff’s claims. The court noted that a cause of action accrues, and the limitations period begins to run, when a plaintiff has “knowledge or notice” of her injury, even if she does not then apprehend its full nature or extent, and is able to “recognize some causal connection between the defendant’s actions” and her injuries. Here, the court held plaintiff’s causes of action accrued when her physician informed her that her shortness of breath and wheezing could be the result of exposure to beryllium through her employment, and ordered a blood test to determine whether she had contracted CBD — not when she was actually diagnosed with the disease the following year — because plaintiff was at that time sufficiently apprised of the casual connection between beryllium exposure and her injury. The court therefore granted summary judgment against plaintiff’s common law claims, which she had failed to bring within the applicable three-year limitations period, but denied summary judgment on plaintiff’s statutory claims, which she had brought within the applicable four-year period.
Defendants next sought to avoid liability under the bulk supplier doctrine, which allows a supplier of bulk products “to discharge its duty to warn end users of a product’s hazards by reasonable reliance on an intermediary.” The court declined to grant summary judgment on the basis of this doctrine, however, because it normally applies to bulk raw materials or liquids that may have numerous commercial uses, of which it would be impractical for the supplier to warn. The court instead found that whether the bulk supplier doctrine shielded defendants — who supplied discrete, finished products to plaintiff’s former employer — raised a question of material fact.
Defendants also sought to avoid liability through the sophisticated user doctrine, which permits a manufacturer to avoid liability for failing to warn a sophisticated end user of a risk or hazard when the user would have appreciated the danger “to the same extent as a warning would have provided.” The court determined that plaintiff’s former employer, rather than plaintiff herself, was the relevant end user, noting that plaintiff was not a consumer of the beryllium-containing products and that this determination was consistent with precedent. The court then determined that the employer was sufficiently sophisticated to cope with the dangers of beryllium without further warning because its employees knew beryllium was dangerous, its policies and internal memoranda highlighted the dangers of the substance and defendants actually provided the employer with warnings of those dangers. Thus, the court held that the sophisticated user doctrine applied and granted summary judgment against all of plaintiff’s claims.
Download the Foley Hoag February 2008 Product Liability Update (.pdf)
For more information about the Product Liability and Complex Tort Practice Group, please contact Dave Geiger.