A Commentary by Karen Ross and Mitchell Crawford

Take-home asbestos cases continue to result in written decisions, including another COVID-19 case ruling relying on take-home asbestos law. We have updated our state-by-state review of important rulings regarding the duty owed, if any, by premises owners, employers, product manufacturers and suppliers, and contractors to protect against take-home asbestos exposure over the past three years, with new decisions in bold.

As you will read, courts across the country have been active in ruling on take-home asbestos cases, including summary judgment decisions from judges in California, Texas, and Washington. Louisiana courts provided several new rulings – ranging from decisions regarding attempts to avoid Workers Compensation barred claims and applying remittitur. The United States District Court for the District of Delaware addressed whether maritime law applied to take-home claims in a 2025 decision. Additionally, while Wisconsin provided a decision citing take-home asbestos law, how that state’s highest court would rule in such a case remains unclear. Most significant, however, was the Kentucky Supreme Court rejecting the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of Kentucky law. While the focus of this article is on take-home duty decisions, filing data is also relevant. KCIC Consulting reports that take-home filings in 2025 steadily continue to be a percentage of all asbestos case filings. In 2025, they were 2.1 percent of all filings, 2.2 percent in 2024, and 3.0 percent in 2023.2 Also of note, the female plaintiff secondary claims comprise about 10 percent and the percentage of combination claims (primary and secondary claims in a single suit) for all plaintiffs was almost 30 percent.

Read the article below, reprinted from the May 2026 edition of COLUMNS-Asbestos with permission from HarrisMartin.