The plaintiff filed this appeal after the trial court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. The trial court also denied the plaintiff’s motion for leave to amend on grounds of futility. Judgment was entered on behalf of Northrup Grumman.
The court noted that its review of a denial of a motion for leave is de novo. The dismissal of the complaint was proper with respect to the plaintiff’s negligence and strict liability claims because it contained “insufficient, non-conclusory allegations to state a claim or put Northrup Grumman on notice of the basis of the claims.” The court was troubled by the lack of any specific product that Northrup Grumman allegedly manufactured or supplied. This void was “fatal” to the negligence and strict liability claims. Accordingly, the motion for leave to amend was also properly denied on futility grounds. To the extent that the plaintiff was asserting a claim for defective products, “Plaintiffs have not persuasively established that this theory is sufficient to justify imposing liability under a theory of products liability, as opposed to liability under a theory of premises liability or general negligence.”
The court found that the trial court erred with respect to the motion for leave with respect to amending the complaint on the plaintiff’s premise liability theory. Here, the amended complaint sufficiently alleged a claim. Specifically, the amended complaint set out a) the identity of the premise where the decedent’s family members worked b) how Northrup Grumman failed to maintain its premises and protect its employees from asbestos c) how decedent’s husband was exposed to asbestos and d) how decedent was harmed from that asbestos. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded the plaintiff’s premise liability claims.