Summary judgment was properly granted to truck brake manufacturers and designers in this case brought by a truck repairman and his son for exposure to asbestos in the brakes. The defendants carried their summary judgment burden by showing that plaintiff’s discovery responses did not reveal any evidence linking the defendants to products that the repairman used in repairing trucks. Plaintiff failed to produce any other evidence to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether the particular defendants supplied the brake parts that the repairman used to repair the trucks or any evidence that the repairman had performed the initial brake repair on a truck, so as to be exposed to the original manufacturer equipment. The defendants could not be held liable for defective design because their brake design did not require asbestos-containing brake linings, although those were the most common type at the time.
California Court of Appeal (Bruiniers, J.); February 2, 2017 (published March 2, 2017); 2017 WL 825272