Richards

Proposition 51 (Civ. Code, § 1431 et seq.), 1 adopted by the voters in 1986, provides that in a tort action governed by principles of comparative fault, a defendant shall not be jointly liable for the plaintiff’s “non-economic damages,” but shall only be severally liable for such damages “in direct proportion to that defendant’s percentage of fault.” (§ 1431.2, subd. (a).) Section 1714.45, adopted by the Legislature in 1987, provides that with specified exceptions, a manufacturer or seller “shall not be liable” in a “product liability action” for harm caused by the ingestion of a “common consumer product intended for personal consumption, such as . . . tobacco” which is “inherently unsafe” and consumed with “ordinary [community] knowledge” of its danger.

We confront a narrow but significant question: To the extent section 1714.45 protects tobacco companies from direct “liability]” for harm caused by smoking, does it also preclude the allocation of proportionate “fault” to absent tobacco companies in a smoker’s suit for asbestos-related lung injury, in order to reduce the “non-economic” damages payable by the asbestos defendant under Proposition 51?

The Court of Appeal…