Decisions by the California Supreme Court in two “take-home” asbestos exposure cases may allow more victims of asbestos exposure to claim compensation.

Both of these asbestos exposure cases involved what’s known as “take-home” exposure. Take-home exposure occurs when an employee who handles asbestos at work brings asbestos dust home on their clothes, exposing the persons in the same household to asbestos.

According to the California Supreme Court, employers whose workers handle asbestos owe a certain duty of care to those employees’ household members. That duty requires employers to exercise reasonable care to prevent employees from bringing home asbestos fibers that could expose members of their households to asbestos.

“Where it is reasonably foreseeable that workers, their clothing, or personal effects will act as vectors carrying asbestos from the premises to household members, employers have a duty to take reasonable care to prevent this means of transmission,” the court said.

New Rule Based on Two Second-Hand Asbestos Exposure Cases

One of the asbestos exposure cases was a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the BNSF Railway Company. Plaintiffs in that case were children of a woman who died of asbestos-related respiratory disease after her husband, a BNSF employee, carried home asbestos fibers on his clothes.

In the second of the two cases, the plaintiff alleged he was exposed to asbestos inadvertently brought home by his uncle, who himself was exposed to asbestos while working at a Pneumo Abex plant in the 1970s.

The court concluded that in light of OSHA standards in place at the time the workers in these cases were exposed to asbestos, it was reasonably foreseeable that persons those workers lived with could also be exposed via asbestos brought home on the workers’ clothes.

It was also reasonably foreseeable that such asbestos exposure could cause the injury suffered by the plaintiffs – namely, asbestos-related respiratory disease.

The court also noted that employers were in a unique position to protect employees’ household members from asbestos exposure. Protecting household members would not impose any greater burden on employers than would protection of the workers themselves, the court said.

The court purposely limited application of this duty to members of the exposed worker’s household. A broader duty would have invited claims based on minute instances of second-hand exposure brought by a potentially unlimited number of claimants, the court said.

The court’s holding does not require that household members must also be members of the exposed worker’s family, however.

Employers aren’t the only type of defendant who can be liable under the new rule. According to the court, premises liability defendants – the owners of premises on which asbestos exposure occurs, or the person with responsibility and control over those premises – may also be liable for take-home asbestos exposure.

Products liability defendants, such as manufacturers of asbestos-based products, are distinguished under the rule, since they have no particular control over how their products are used in the workplace and no control over on-site asbestos protection measures.