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After Texas Court Avoids Question on Duty to Warn, Can Suppliers Relax?

By Janice G. Inman
June 30, 2005

The nation's silica litigation attorneys and their clients kept a close watch on a case decided last year in Texas that was supposed to help define the limits of liability for failure to warn of silicosis danger. It took nearly 2 years for the Texas Supreme Court to finally issue its decision in Humble Sand & Gravel Inc. v. Gomez, 146 S.W.3d 170 (Tex. 2004), holding that flint supplier Humble Sand & Gravel Inc. had no duty to warn companies whose employees used the product for abrasive blasting that there were risks associated with silica dust in the workplace. The reason the court gave for its decision was that the risks of silica dust in the workplace had been known for years and companies that regularly dealt with blasting materials were “sophisticated users.”

What the court did not rule on was the second key question posed by the case: whether the “sophisticated user” doctrine would also relieve an abrasive material supplier of the duty to warn its customers' employees ' who work with the product and are thus vulnerable to inhalation diseases ' that exposure to silica dust can lead to serious disease and death and that they should wear protective equipment when working with the product. A decision on this issue, the court stated, would have to be determined at a new trial. Therefore, the court remanded to the 60th District Court in Beaumont for a new trial. The decision reversed Texas' Sixth District Court of Appeals holding, which had affirmed a more than $2 million judgment for Raymond Gomez and his two children.

So, what became of that second question the court didn't answer in September? Should preventive measures be taken by the industry to avoid a potential new source of liability?

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