Under an opinion issued Wednesday by the Georgia Supreme Court, a lawsuit may go forward against a manufacturer of asbestos-containing water pipes, brought by a woman who claimed she contracted malignant mesothelioma from washing the clothes of her father, a former Thomasville city utilities employee.

With the unanimous opinion, written by Justice Carol Hunstein, the high court has partially reversed a ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals, finding that the company was not responsible for warning the woman about the asbestos dust from its products, but she did have a legitimate claim related to the products’ design.

“Consequently, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals in part and reverse in part,” the opinion said.

According to briefs filed in the case, CertainTeed is a Pennsylvania company that has been manufacturing and selling asbestos-containing products since 1930. In 1962, it began manufacturing asbestos pipe for use in municipal water and sewer systems. James Fletcher was an employee of the City of Thomasville Waterville Water and Light Department from 1948 until he retired in 1983. Fletcher became the “pipe specialist” whose primary duty from 1971-77 was handling, cutting, installing, and repairing asbestos-containing cement pipe manufactured by CertainTeed.

When he cut and beveled the pipes, dust containing asbestos was deposited on his work clothing. At the end of the work day, he wore those clothes home. Marcella Fletcher, Fletcher’s daughter, began washing her family’s clothing three days a week in 1959 when she was 8 years old and continued until she was 26. During the years her father worked with the asbestos pipe, she said there was always a grayish dust on his work clothes that became a “mist” in the air when she shook them out before washing.

After she contracted mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung usually linked to asbestos exposure, she sued CertainTeed in Thomas County State Court, claiming she got the disease as a result of her exposure to the asbestos fibers on her father’s clothing. Mesothelioma is often fatal.

CertainTeed filed a motion for “summary judgment,” asking the judge to rule in its favor on the ground that the manufacturer owed no “duty of care” to Ms. Fletcher “because she was neither a user nor a consumer of the product” and because CertainTeed “could not have reasonably foreseen that (she) would be affected by their product.” A judge grants summary judgment after determining a jury trial is unnecessary because the facts are undisputed and the law falls squarely on the side of one of the parties.

Following a hearing, the trial judge ruled in CertainTeed’s favor and granted it summary judgment. Fletcher then appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which partially reversed the state court’s decision, ruling that her claims of defective design of its products and its failure to warn her about the dangers of asbestos dust should go before a jury. CertainTeed then appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case to determine whether the Court of Appeals was wrong in reversing summary judgment to a manufacturer of asbestos-laden products where the plaintiff’s alleged injury was not caused by her direct contact with the product but by her exposure to toxic dust brought home on the clothing worn by the person who did have direct contact.

“While we conclude that CertainTeed owed no duty to warn Fletcher of the possible hazards of asbestos dust from its products, the Court of Appeals correctly reversed the trial court’s judgment with respect to Fletcher’s defective design claim,” the opinion says.

In its appeal, CertainTeed — whose attorneys include former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears — argued that under a 2005 decision in CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Williams, the state Supreme Court ruled that Georgia negligence law does not impose any duty on an employer to a third-party, non-employee, who comes into contact with its employee’s asbestos-tainted work clothing at locations away from the workplace. The Court of Appeals ruled, however, that Ms. Fletcher’s design-defect claim was governed by the “risk-utility” test adopted by this Court in its 1994 ruling in Banks v. ICI Americas, Inc. and not CSX Transportation.

The Court of Appeals concluded that while Ms. Fletcher would not have seen any warning label placed on CertainTeed’s products, such a warning would have allowed her father to take steps to protect her from any danger.

Supreme Court justices, however, “We are disinclined to conclude that CertainTeed owed a duty to warn third parties based on the fact that, in this case, such a warning may have been effective,” the opinion says. “It is not difficult to envision that while some workers might have taken steps to protect or warn family members or other individuals with whom they came in contact, other workers might not have taken such steps.”

“Therefore, we think it unreasonable to impose a duty on CertainTeed to warn all individuals in (Ms.) Fletcher’s position, whether those individuals be family members or simply members of the public who were exposed to asbestos-laden clothing, as the mechanism and scope of such warnings would be endless,” the opinion says. “Accordingly, we hold that CertainTeed owed no duty to warn Fletcher regarding the dangers of the asbestos dust and thus, that the Court of Appeals erroneously reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to CertainTeed with respect to (Ms.) Fletcher’s duty to warn claim.”

In a special concurrence, Justice Harold Melton agrees with the overall judgment, but disagrees with the majority’s analysis of Ms. Fletcher’s duty to warn claim. “Our analysis in this case does not and should not reach or analyze the issue of CertainTeed’s duty to warn (Ms.) Fletcher’s father or the ramifications of any failure to warn (Ms.) Fletcher’s father,” he writes. The analysis “must be limited to the issues relating to the failure to warn (Ms.) Fletcher, not her father in this case.”