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Successor Liability and the Long-Lived Product

By Janice G. Inman
September 02, 2017

When is a successor company liable for the torts of its predecessor? The question can be a thorny one, and each state has its own take on the issue. A recent New York case gave a federal district court the chance to decipher that state's legislative and case law, allowing it to conclude that not only was the machine that caused the injury properly made at the time is was manufactured, but also that the current owner of the assets of the company that made it could not be held responsible for a plaintiff's injuries.

An Injury Many Years Down the Road

The case of Redmond v. Teledyne, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87026 (N.D.N.Y. 6/7/17), was brought by plaintiff Daniel Redmond, who lost a thumb in 2012 while working as a machinist at UPSCO Inc. The pipe-cutting machine he was using was manufactured 56 years earlier by Landis Machine Co. The company folded in 1968, but its assets were acquired by Teledyne Machine Corp, which one month later changed its name to Landis Machine Co. Five months after that, Landis Machine Co. merged into Teledyne Argonaut Corp., which changed its name several days later to Teledyne Mid-America Corp. This company merged into Teledyne Industries Inc. in December 1975. Two years later, Teledyne Industries, Inc. sold its pipe-making assets, including the Landis assets, to Barth Industries. Teledyne Industries, Inc. changed its name to TDY Industries, Inc. on Dec. 9, 1999. On Jan. 2, 2012, TDY Industries, Inc. converted to an LLC. See id. And, finally, on Nov. 4, 2013, TDY Industries, LLC sold the remaining assets of its Landis division to Kennametal.

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