## Facts

- The IDS Center office complex in Minneapolis was constructed around 1972.
- The building’s structural fireproofing, “Firebar,” manufactured by Carey-Canada, contained asbestos.
- After performance problems with Firebar, the owner installed a different fireproofing product, Monokote, manufactured by W.R. Grace, in other portions of the complex.
- The owners later discovered asbestos-containing fireproofing in the building and alleged it created health risks requiring substantial inspection, maintenance, removal, and replacement measures.
- The owners sued the fireproofing manufacturers asserting negligence and strict products liability, seeking recovery of asbestos-related inspection/maintenance costs and removal/replacement costs.
- Carey-Canada and Celotex entered bankruptcy during the litigation, leaving the dispute to proceed in Minnesota state court against remaining parties.

## Issues

1. Whether Minnesota’s economic-loss doctrine bars negligence and strict-liability claims seeking costs to inspect, maintain, remove, and replace asbestos-containing fireproofing in a building when the claimed harm is confined to the building itself.
2. Whether the presence of asbestos-containing fireproofing, without actual personal injury or damage to property other than the building, constitutes “physical harm” sufficient to permit tort recovery.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court held that the owners could not recover in negligence or strict products liability for the claimed asbestos-related inspection, maintenance, removal, and replacement costs.
- The court classified the claimed damages as economic loss to the product itself (the building as an integrated whole), not compensable physical harm in tort.
- Because there was no actual personal injury or damage to “other property,” the owners’ remedies, if any, lay in contract or warranty rather than tort.
- The court affirmed the dismissal of the tort claims seeking these economic losses.

## Legal Principles

- When a product defect causes only economic loss—such as repair, replacement, or preventative costs—and does not cause personal injury or damage to other property, tort remedies in negligence and strict liability are unavailable; contract/warranty principles govern.
- For purposes of the economic-loss doctrine, a building and its structural components may be treated as an integrated product; remediation of a defective component is treated as loss to the product itself rather than damage to other property.
- A potential or feared hazard, standing alone, does not convert preventative or remedial expenditures into tort-compensable physical harm absent actual injury to persons or other property.

## Conclusion

Minnesota’s economic-loss doctrine barred the IDS Center owners’ negligence and strict-liability claims for asbestos abatement costs because the alleged harm was economic loss confined to the building as an integrated product, with no actual personal injury or damage to other property.


80 S. Eighth St. Ltd. P’ship v. Carey-Can. Inc., 486 N.W.2d 393 (Minn. 1992)