Plaintiffs, husband and wife, sued, inter alia, defendant former manufacturer of friction brake products containing asbestos, alleging that the manufacturer was liable to them in strict liability and for negligence on theories of civil conspiracy and concert of action. The San Francisco County Superior Court, California, refused to instruct the jury on these theories. The jury entered a verdict for the manufacturer. Plaintiffs appealed.
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Overview
The issue in this case was whether the manufacturer, a dissolved, bankrupt company, could be held liable in tort to plaintiffs for injuries caused by asbestos inhalation where plaintiffs possessed no evidence that the husband, who had worked for several years as a mechanic repairing friction brakes and had contracted a form of pulmonary cancer, had been exposed to products manufactured by the manufacturer. Plaintiffs argued that the trial court erred in refusing to give a civil conspiracy instruction on their negligence and strict liability tort claims and in refusing to give a concert of action instruction. The instant court concluded that both instructions proffered by plaintiffs were inappropriate as a matter of law and that the trial court did not err in declining to give them. A duty, independent, of the conspiracy itself, had to exist in order for substantive liability to attach. The manufacturer was under no duty to the husband because plaintiffs could not show he was exposed to any of the manufacturer’s products. Application of a concert of action theory of collective liability would have expanded the concert of action doctrine far beyond its intended scope.
Outcome
The judgment was affirmed.