What is the state of the art of the state-of-the-art defense in the failure to warn?

Plaintiff moved before trial to prevent defendants from presenting state-of-the-art evidence. By that time, plaintiff had indicated that he was proceeding, as to defective design, only on the "consumer expectation" prong of the design defect test set out in Barker v. Lull Engineering Co. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 413, 426, 143 Cal.Rptr. 225, 573 P.2d 443 (hereafter Barker ). Accordingly, the argument on plaintiff's motion was directed primarily to the applicability of the state-of-the-art defense to that theory of strict liability. ² The trial court granted the motion, citing the "Hawaii cases," ³ which held that state-of-the-art evidence is irrelevant to any theory of strict liability. The defendants then moved to prevent plaintiff from proceeding on the failure-to-warn theory on grounds of waiver ⁴ and fairness. In response to the court's request for an offer of proof on the alleged failure to warn, plaintiff referred to catalogs and other literature depicting workers without respirators or protective devices and offered to prove that, until the mid-1960's, defendants had given no warnings of the dangers associated with asbestos, that various warnings given by some of the defendants after 1965 were inadequate, and, finally, that defendants removed the products from the market entirely in the early 1970's. Defendants argued in turn that the state of the art, i.e., what was scientifically knowable in the period 1943-1974, was their obvious and only defense to any cause of action for failure to warn, and that, in view of the court's decision to exclude state-of-the-art evidence, fairness dictated that plaintiff be precluded from proceeding on that theory. With no statement of reasons, the trial court granted [53 Cal.3d 993] defendants' motion and, at trial, refused plaintiff's request that the jury be instructed pursuant to BAJI No. 9.00.7. ⁵ After a four-week trial, the jury returned a verdict for defendants, finding in a special verdict that defendants' products had no design defects.