I'm working on a story out of New York's Erie County Supreme Court right now.  Judge Lane has has held that a spouse has presented triable issues as to whether two of her husband's employers distributed asbestos-containing products.  Ho, hum, right?

But what makes this worthy of a blog post, as far as I'm concerned, is what Judge Lane says about duty in strict products liability cases.  In his opinion, Judge Lane holds that the two employers owed a duty to their employee's wife for her exposure to asbestos while laundering his clothes.  She suffers from mesothelioma, the same disease that claimed her husband's life.

Your first thought might be that Holdampf should have closed the door on this.  Based on the opinion, I'd say the employers certainly did.  But as Judge Lane notes, that case involved common-law negligence, not strict products liability. 

I leave you with this quote from Judge Lane ... "To deny a right to relief to persons injured by a defective or dangerous product solely on the ground that they were not themselves its users would be neither reasonable nor just."