Puckett

Plaintiff Ralph Puckett filed a complaint for personal injuries against numerous corporate defendants, including the GAF Corporation, as the result of his toxic exposure to asbestos. After answering the complaint and completing some discovery, including the deposition of plaintiff, defendants brought a joint motion for summary judgment, claiming that plaintiff’s complaint was not a timely one and had been barred by the one-year statute of limitation set forth in Code of Civil Procedure section 340, subdivision (3). The trial court granted defendants’ motion. Plaintiff has appealed from the judgment; we reverse.

Facts

The pertinent facts underlying this dispute are not controverted, although the inferences and conclusions to be drawn from them are. Briefly, it appears that plaintiff ingested substantial amounts of asbestos while working in and around warehouses and ships as an employee of defendants Owens-Coming Fiberglass Corporation and Johns-Manville Corporation from 1947 and 1956. In 1956, plaintiff left his employment with Johns-Manville to engage in a new occupation, construction estimating.

On February 26, 1977, plaintiff missed work due to a respiratory ailment.…