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July 1, 2008

Lynch: Lead verdict reversal 'enormously disappointing'

PROVIDENCE -- Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch called "enormously disappointing" the state Supreme Court's reversal today of a 2006 jury verdict that had favored the state in its landmark lawsuit against companies that made and sold lead paint in Rhode Island.

“Today’s decision affects every Rhode Islander, every taxpayer, every parent and, especially, every child -- who has been injured, is still threatened with injury today, or will be poisoned by lead in the future," Lynch said in a statement this afternoon. "This reversal is enormously disappointing, and I disagree with it in the strongest terms."

Rhode Island's highest court, in a 4-to-0 decision, overturned the 2006 verdict calling for Millennium Holdings, NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams to participate in a program to rid houses of lead that could have cost the companies upwards of $2.4 billion.

The high court also upheld a judgment in favor of ARCO.

The court said the state could not factually support its claim that the companies created a public nuisance.

The high court's ruling that the defendants "do not have to clean up the mess they have made," according to Lynch, is "legally and fundamentally wrong."

The case was litigated for more than eight years, Lynch said, and, "despite the multi-million dollar lead industry-funded defense waged by an army of more than 100 lawyers, my office proved to the satisfaction of a unanimous jury that the three defendants were liable for the public nuisance that their products created in Rhode Island."

Lynch said he wants every Rhode Islander to know "this office fought this battle well, and to what appears to be the end."

He added: "We met every legal challenge from Corporate America’s defense counsel and we survived their every attack to secure victory from a jury of our peers. I believed then, believe now, and will always believe, that our peers got it right.”

The first state lawsuit against lead-paint manufacturers was actually filed by Lynch's predecessor, Sheldon Whitehouse, now one of Rhode Island's U.S. senators. After having work done on his Providence house, annual lead-screening tests had revealed his two children had mildly elevated blood-lead levels.

Extra: Read the decision

Extra: See the Journal's series on lead poisoning in Rhode Island

Read about the jury verdict in the trial

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 3:57 PM | Permalink

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