Duffy v. CBS: Maryland's Highest Court Refuses to Let the Statute of Repose Outrun Mesothelioma
Mesothelioma is a cruel disease on its own terms — an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen, caused overwhelmingly by asbestos exposure. But it carries a second cruelty that only lawyers and epidemiologists talk about: latency. The disease typically surfaces thirty, forty, even fifty years after the exposure that caused it. A man breathes asbestos dust on a job site in the 1970s, raises a family, retires — and then, decades later, the diagnosis arrives.
Late last month, the Court of Appeals of Maryland confronted what that latency means for the courthouse door. In Duffy v. CBS Corp. (decided March 28, 2018), the Court held that Maryland's 20-year statute of repose for improvements to real property did not bar the claims of a steamfitter who developed mesothelioma four decades after his exposure.
The problem: a deadline that runs before the disease exists
James Piper worked as a steamfitter on construction projects in the 1970s, where he was exposed to asbestos. Forty years later, he developed mesothelioma. When he sued, the defense reached for Courts & Judicial Proceedings § 5-108 — Maryland's statute of repose, which generally extinguishes claims arising from defective and unsafe conditions of improvements to real property 20 years after the improvement is completed.
A statute of repose is a different, harsher animal than a statute of limitations, and the difference decided this case:
| Statute of limitations | Statute of repose | |
|---|---|---|
| Clock starts | When the claim accrues (often at discovery of the injury) | At a fixed event — here, completion of the improvement |
| Sensitive to when you were hurt? | Yes — discovery rule can delay accrual | No — it can expire before any injury exists |
| Effect on a 40-year-latency disease | Claim survives; clock starts at diagnosis | Applied broadly, the claim would die decades before diagnosis |
Applied mechanically, the repose statute would mean that every Maryland worker exposed during 1970s construction lost his rights by the 1990s — while he was still perfectly healthy, with no injury to sue over and no way to know one was coming.
Statutes of repose exist for understandable reasons: legislatures wanted architects, engineers, and builders to be able to close their books on projects finished decades ago, rather than insuring against every future accident on a building they handed over in 1975. But asbestos disease presents the doctrine's hardest case, because the "future accident" is not a slip on a stairway in year 25 — it is a disease planted in a worker's lungs during construction itself, on a fuse the defendant lit and the worker could not see. Whether the legislature meant § 5-108 to snuff out those claims was the question at the heart of Duffy.
The holding
The Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Greene, held that the statute of repose did not bar Mr. Piper's claims. The Court analyzed the statute's asbestos-related reach and its effective-date limits, and preserved the long-latency claim. The courthouse stays open for Maryland workers whose occupational diseases outlast the repose period.
What this means for injured people in Maryland
Duffy matters far beyond one steamfitter's case. Maryland has generations of workers — shipyard workers, steamfitters, pipefitters, boilermakers, electricians, drywall finishers — whose asbestos exposures date to the 1960s and 1970s and whose diagnoses are arriving now. For those families, Duffy removes a defense that would have ended cases before they could begin, no matter how strong the proof of exposure and causation.
Two practical notes. First, the ordinary statute of limitations still applies: once a mesothelioma diagnosis is made, the clock is running, and asbestos cases require an enormous amount of historical reconstruction — work sites, product identification, coworker witnesses — so early legal help genuinely matters. Families can help that reconstruction more than they realize: union records, pension and Social Security earnings histories, old photographs of job sites, and the names of longtime coworkers are often the seeds from which the whole liability case grows. Second, Duffy is a reminder of a theme that runs through Maryland limitations law (we walked through the whole landscape in last month's deadline guide): the law distinguishes between plaintiffs who slept on known rights and plaintiffs who never had a chance to know. Mesothelioma victims are the purest example of the second category, and the Court of Appeals treated them accordingly.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the window to act opens at diagnosis — not at exposure. If you or a loved one has been hurt, call Posey Lebowitz at (202) 524-0123 or send us a message for a free consultation.
Part of our DMV case law archive, compiled in 2026 to reflect the archive of some of the most important decisions in injury law.