City of Milwaukee Loses Lead Paint Case
This is a good ruling.
The jury in the City of Milwaukee’s civil lawsuit against the nation’s leading manufacturer of lead pigment for paint has just returned its verdicts, and it’s now official: The city has lost its demand for $52.6 million.
While the jury voted 10-2 that the presence of lead paint in some of the city’s housing stock created a public nuisance, it also voted 10-2 that NL Industries was not negligent.
The ruling was a clear victory for NL Industries over the city, which had sought $52.6 million for reimbursement of the city’s cost of remediating lead paint from homes in poor neighborhoods.
...and now the rent of thousands of residents in the poorest neighborhoods will rise as their landlords will be forced to cover the extremely expensive cost of removing lead-based paint on their own.
Posted by Fuzz on June 22, 2007 at 1814 hrs
How about we just tell people to watch their kids and not let them suck on the paint??? Oh, wait. They are poor, they can’t be expected to be responsible for anything.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22, 2007 at 1822 hrs
Well, if it is just left in the home, then the landlords are going to either a) have to pay to have it removed AFTER they get sued by a neglectful parent or b) have to have it removed after their insurance company says they’d better get rid of it or have their policy canceled.
Posted by Fuzz on June 22, 2007 at 1827 hrs
Gonna celebrate and go out and buy a Thomas Train set?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22, 2007 at 2249 hrs
Sanity in the city of Milwaukee…who woulda thunk it?
Posted by The Asian Badger on June 22, 2007 at 2305 hrs
What policy? Very few, if any insurance companies will cover lead paint, so most of these owners are hanging out there by themselves.
We also must remember that in many cases, the government required that lead paint be used in homes because of it’s durability. And to make things even worse, the government knew that it was a dangerous product decades ago.
Of course, no one from the city wants to talk about the lead that was in gasoline until the mid-70’s. That lead is still in the environment and is being blown around and and tracked into the households of everyone, not just poor people.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22, 2007 at 2311 hrs
At least there are still some people on juries with common sense. How could anyone think it was this company’s fault? Did they sell paint for human consumption?
“Now it’s time for the city to begin the more important task of going after the landlords who are responsible for this problem,” Scott said. OK, so the winning lawyer now wants to go after the landlords? They might be guilty of poor upkeep in some cases, but I doubt they suggested eating the paint either.
This is simply an unfortunate situation. I’m sure most houses 100 years ago contained lead paint…it made the paint last longer and, until the discovery of plastic additives, was the best choice around. The difference is, most people “remodeled” the problem out of their homes over the years. If we hadn’t suddenly started treating lead like it was nuclear waste, it probably have been eliminated in poor neighborhoods as well…now it has to be “remediated” which is another way of saying “simple removal in a very expensive way”.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22, 2007 at 2314 hrs
no one from the city wants to talk about the lead that was in gasoline until the mid-70’s Not to mention the fact that lead piping was used for water systems in the early years and is likely still in place in some areas (it still was in the house I lived in on the East Side during college years). It’s simply too expensive to track down and fix, just like the combined sewer systems, so you try to blame someone else.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22, 2007 at 2322 hrs
What effect will this ruling have on any lawsuit against the city for actual damages from lead poisening resulting from Milwaukee’s continued use of lead pipe in the water distribution system?
Posted by triticale on June 23, 2007 at 0615 hrs
Remeber this suit was about whether the paint companies were neglgient in using the lead in the paint mixes and therefor should have to pay for remediation. If someone can prove that a landlord refused to fix a problem with flaking lead paint (lead paint is only dangerous if you consume it and you can’t consume it if it is under a few coats lf latex paint) then the people who are harmed can sue the landlord the same way they could sue them if they refused to fix the stairs and their kid fell down them.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 23, 2007 at 1032 hrs
The bottom line in this issue is that the city should be more worried about the lead that is flying through the air and less worried about the lead that is on windows and walls.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 23, 2007 at 1531 hrs
Nice perspective Orv. We should also remember that the defendants were not shown to have ever made or sold any of the paint that was in use in these buildings. The mentality that allows people to seek to take from someone who has done nothing to them is the same that leads to the bullets in the air.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 24, 2007 at 2014 hrs
If this much time and effort had been expended fixing the problem instead of trying to prosecute a company that simply manufactured a legal product, it would have been at least half-solved by now. Stick some paint scrapers in the hands of the lawyers and politicians and have them put in some “comp” time.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 24, 2007 at 2032 hrs
You might get a few politicians to show up for an event like that but only if it’s a photo-op. As far as lawyers, I doubt it very much. Great idea though.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 24, 2007 at 2038 hrs
With the city losing this suit I can hear my property taxes rising to pay to clean up this mess.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 25, 2007 at 0923 hrs
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