COMMUNITY/LOCAL ACTIONS |
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This page presents actions by, or views on, local and state efforts to hold the lead industry responsible. We should benefit from the experiences and advice of those who have already confronted the industry and its allies. (To see an organizing flyer in Massachusetts, click on the icon to the left.) |
This is a memo to the Massachusetts State Senate president urging him to support proposed legislation. |
To see testimony on the Massachusetts proposed bill of 2000 (H. 5122), click here. |
In California, a law was passed that required paint and oil companies to pay an annual fee that would fund the state's childhood lead poisoning prevention program. The fees are based on those industries' contribution to child lead poisoning. The industries challenged the law in court, claiming that they were being illegally taxed. The California Supreme Court disagreed. It ruled that the state could force a guilty party to pay to help eliminate the hazard that it created., and that indeed the paint companies had made quite a mess. (Click on the icon to the left to see the full court decision.) The county of Santa Clara (California) filed suit against several of the lead pigment companies early in 2000 and was soon joined by Alameda, Santa Cruz and Solano counties. Click to the left for a newpaper story on the Alameda County action. The following update comes from the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning: Santa Clara County Case Survives Lead Industry's Demurrer On December 8, 2000, a California Superior Court judge ruled that Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Alameda counties could proceed with their claim that the lead industry fraudulently concealed the hazards of lead-based paint. The judge rejected the lead industry's argument that the fraud claim was time-barred, and also ruled that the government services doctrine (which the defense argued prohibits governmental entities from recovering the costs of public services) did not apply in this case. The court threw out plaintiffs' strict liability, negligence, nuisance and unjust enrichment claims, but left open the possibility that the counties could replead those claims to correct the deficiencies. LEAD INDUSTRY ADMITS GUILT In arguing that the lawsuit by the counties should be thrown out on legal grounds, the lead industry defendants actually admitted their guilt. In their so-called "Joint Demurrer" before the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, dated October 11, 2000, they state that "...the health risks of lead have been so well known, for so long, that any reliance on purported representations that minimize the risk of lead paint, convey the impression that lead paint is not hazardous if musused and ingested, would not be justifiable as a matter of law" With no hint of disagreement they cite the plaintiffs' assertion that...."the first cases of lead poisoning in children [from lead paint] were reported in Australia over 100 years. ago," and "...Half a century ago, 30 to 40 newspaper articles per month were being written on the effects of lead on children, adults, livestock and wildfowl." In October, 1999, Rhode Island became the first state to file suit against the lead paint industry. Click the icon to the left to see the full complaint. To see a summary of the Rhode Island lawsuit, click the icon to the left. Jim Celenza of the RI Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, after reviewing the case for a lawsuit against the lead industry, makes a proposal for the establishment of a trust fund. A proportion of all proceeds from lawsuits against landlords would be added to the trust fund for primary prevention of child lead poisoning.(Click on the icon to the left to read his "Modest proposal".) According to the Providence Journal, on October 12, 2000 a hearing was held on the case in Rhode Island Superior Court. And much of what the lead industry's lawyers said reveals their moral bankruptcy. Take, for instance, the attorney for Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). He "likened Whitehouse [the RI Attorney General] to the alchemists of the Middle Ages, who tried to turn lead into gold. Here, what the attorney general's office is saying is, 'We want to turn lead pigment into dollars.'" Absolutely! - because that's exactly what ARCO and the other lead pigment corporations did for many years, all the while knowing that they were poisoning and even killing young children. But the RI Attorney General wants to use the money to prevent further lead poisoning. Nothing wrong with that kind of alchemist, especially since RI has one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country. Another ARCO lawyer contended, according to the Journal, that, "Whitehouse could not sue on behalf of the state's lead-poisoned children because the connection between the state and the poisoned children 'is too far away.'" Too far away? If the State of Rhode Island's health, housing and environmental protection agencies do not have responsibility for protecting children from lead poisoning, who does? As Whitehouse said in defence of his authority to force the lead companies to clean up the mess that they made, "If someone dumps junk on your property, 'they don't have to just stop it. They have to clean it up.'" In Milwaukee the City Council has voted to sue the lead paint makers. The community group, Wisconsin Citizen Action, which lead the fight to pass this resolution, had to overcome fierce opposition from the lead industry. Before giving the final go-ahead, the Council postponed action several times, giving the industry more time to exert pressure. (Click the icon to the left to see some of that story.) However, not all business interests supported the lead manufacturers. The Business Journal of Milwaukee, while buying into the falacy that the industry was not aware of lead paint's danger to children until 1949, nevertheless considered the industry to have "...responsibility for correcting the problem. After all, they profited from the production and sale of the lead-base paint." click here to see article. But in order to win the City Council vote the community had to overcome fierce industry opposition. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "The threat of the lead-poisoning lawsuit has led the paint industry to hire most of the city's highest-profile, best-connected lobbyists and lawyers to try to block it on the Common Council." They were joined by many of the lead industry's national representatives, including the ubiquitous Alan Wheat (see page 2 ["There you go again"]). Although they ultimately lost their battle to prevent a vote to sue, industry lobyists did manage to delay the action. After one vote to postpone, one of the pro-lawsuit aldermen commented, "If not for the lobbyists, it would not have been held. That's as direct an influence as it can be." On March 20, 2001 the City of Chicago announced its intention of suing the lead paint industry. The Chicago Tribune quoted the city's Law Department spokesperson as saying that: "They [the lead industry] created a public nuisance by producing a meterial that is toxic and poisons people." The paper quoted industry sources' usual defenses that it sponsored research on lead's health effects and that poorly maintained properties are to blame for child lead poisoning. .The Tribune also quoted an alderman from Milwaukee (which voted a few months ago to sue the industry) who said , "You can't just drop a time bomb in a neighborhood and then say, 'Well, I stopped manufacturing it,.'" |
Letter to the Massachusetts Attorney General July 28, 1999 Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly One Ashburton Place Boston, MA 02108-1698 Dear Attorney General Reilly, We, the undersigned, are writing to strongly encourage you to file suit against the lead paint industry, as other states and cities are now doing, to recover Massachusetts costs for lead poisoning prevention, medical treatment, and hazard reduction. The lead paint industry knew that its product caused lead poisoning, especially among children. However, the companies and their trade association negligently hid this information from the public for many years in order to protect huge profits. With one of the oldest and most leaded housing stocks in the nation, Massachusetts should join Rhode Island as soon as possible in leading litigation efforts against the lead paint industry. As you probably know, lead poisoned children, who disproportionately live in poor neighborhoods and communities of color, suffer from irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems. Studies have shown that they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to end up in prison, further compounding state costs and struggles. Massachusetts state agencies as well as homeowners and tax-payers continue to pay millions of dollars per year in lead poisoning-related costs, which include the Massachusetts Housing & Finance Agency's Get the Lead Out program, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, the lead-related programs of the Massachusetts Department of Labor & Workforce Development, and Medicaid costs that stem from lead poisoning. Additional state costs associated with lead poisoning include special education, developmental testing, early education intervention, attention to juvenile delinquency, and lead hazard control (including abatement) in both public and private housing. Moreover, the Commonwealth has spent millions of dollars during the past three decades in deleading such public properties as schools, community centers, hospitals, water tanks, and bridges. By setting up a lead paint industry funded pot of money earmarked for our state's lead poisoning-related efforts, we would ensure that the companies that knowingly caused this problem pay for some of our attempted solutions. The people and organizations listed below are ready and willing to assist your office in researching and advocating for this endeavor. To contact our coalition, you can call Gina Coplon, Project Director of the Lead Action Public Working Group (advocacy arm of the Lead Action Collaborative), at 617-723-7415x403. Thank you for your attention. Sincerely, the following people and organizations listed on the next page.* [To see the list of organizations, click the icon to the left.] |
