Opinion
No. 152, September Term, 1990.
February 11, 1992.
Certiorari to Court of Special Appeals (Circuit Court for Cecil County), Donaldson C. Cole, Jr., Judge.
Wendy Fleishman (Fox, Rothschild, O'Brien Frankel, Philadelphia, Pa., Bertram Goldstein, Goldstein Hood Associates, Baltimore, all on brief), for petitioners.
Willis A. Siegfried (Dennis R. McEwen, Eckert, Seamans, Cherin Mellott, Pittsburgh, Pa., all on brief), Clifford J. Zatz (David C. Allen, Ann H. Jameson, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer Feld, Washington, D.C., all on brief), for respondents.
James E. Gray, Linda S. Woolf, Goodell, DeVries, Leech Gray, Baltimore, amicus curiae, for BASF Corp. and Eastman Kodak Co.
Argued before MURPHY, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, McAULIFFE, CHASANOW and ROBERT M. BELL, JJ.
We granted certiorari to consider whether the Petitioners are entitled to a new trial (1) because the defense of sophisticated user should not have been presented in a strict liability case; (2) because the sophisticated user defense was impermissible under the facts of the case; and (3) because the jury instruction and reinstruction regarding the sophisticated user defense may have misled the jury.
After careful consideration of these issues, for reasons stated in the opinion of Chief Judge Wilner for the Court of Special Appeals in Kennedy v. Mobay, 84 Md. App. 397, 579 A.2d 1191 (1990), the judgment is affirmed.
JUDGMENTS AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.