Port Authority of New York & New Jersey v. Arcadian Corp.
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
189 F.3d 305 (1999)
Terrorists built the 1993 World Trade Center bomb using raw fertilizer products manufactured by Arcadian Corp. and other companies (defendants), which were not themselves defective or dangerous until combined with other materials; the Port Authority (plaintiff), owner of the World Trade Center, sued on theories of negligence, strict products liability, and failure to warn, citing two decades-old ammonium nitrate explosions and foreign regulation of the fertilizers as evidence the danger was foreseeable. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim.
Whether a manufacturer of a component that is adulterated for criminal purposes can be held liable for injuries caused by the adulterated end product where the component itself was not defective or unreasonably dangerous and where the component's adulteration was not reasonably foreseeable.