Products Liability Law Reporter

The New York Court of Appeals held that summary judgment for Honeywell International, Inc., was improper where the company failed to show that industrial coke ovens manufactured by its predecessor were not products for purposes of strict liability.

Donald Terwilliger worked at a Bethlehem Steel plant. His job required him to stand on top of a collection of coke ovens near where the ovens released emissions. After Terwilliger died of lung cancer, his family sued Honeywell as successor in interest to the Wilputte Coke Oven Division of the Allied Chemical Corp. Suit alleged strict products liability and failure to warn of the known dangers of inhaling coke emissions, among other things.

The defense moved unsuccessfully for summary judgment; however, an appellate court reversed on the basis that a coke oven installed as part of a complex of masonry structures at the plant does not constitute a product.

Reversing, the state high court found that whether a seller has a duty to warn depends on the nature of a transaction, including the amount of control the seller has over a product’s design, the product’s standardization, and the ability to know and warn about the dangers the product poses to reasonably foreseeable users. The Wilputte coke ovens had one standardized purpose of producing coke, the court said. Moreover, the company was an expert designer and manufacturer of coke ovens, exerted full control over the manner in which the ovens were built, and placed the ovens into the stream of commerce. The company also supplied all of the necessary materials for the ovens, installed the ovens according to its own designs, and had superior knowledge of the ovens’ intended functionality, the court found.

The court rejected the defense’s argument that the plaintiff’s failure to warn claim must fail because it does not identify a specific part of the oven that had a defect. Citing case law, the court held that failure-to-warn claims are premised on the foreseeable use of a product and the resultant dangers, not a specific component.

Consequently, the court concluded that summary judgment for the defense was not warranted because the defendant failed to meet its burden of establishing that the coke ovens to which Terwilliger was exposed were not products.

Citation: Terwilliger v. Beazer East, Inc., 2019 WL 2424491 (N.Y. June 11, 2019).

Plaintiff counsel: AAJ member John Lipsitz, Buffalo, N.Y.