NAMIC and PCI Commend RI Supreme Court’s Decision to Overturn Ruling Against Lead Paint Manufacturers

Last week, the Rhode Island Supreme Court unanimously overturned a lower court decision against several former lead paint manufacturers and their trade association in which they were found liable for childhood lead poisoning under public nuisance law. The Rhode Island court now joins the Ohio, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin high courts in preventing the expansion of these types of cases. 
 
In State of Rhode Island v. Lead Industries Association (LIA) et. al., the state alleged that the defendants misrepresented and concealed evidence regarding the hazards of lead paint. The state claimed that it had been damaged because it incurred substantial costs related to discovering and abating lead, detecting lead poisoning, and providing medical care for lead-poisoned residents. After a four-month trial, which concluded February 2006, a jury found three manufacturers, NL Industries, Inc., the Sherwin-Williams Co., and Millennium Holdings LLC, were liable for causing or substantially contributing to the creation of the public nuisance and that these defendants should be ordered to abate the public nuisance. The state proposed that the defendants pay $2.4 billion for the cleanup and removal of lead paint. Ultimately, the case was appealed to the state Supreme Court which concluded that the state did not prove the public nuisance claim. 
 
In reaching this conclusion, the Court stated that “We do not mean to minimize the severity of the harm that thousands of children in Rhode Island have suffered as a result of lead poisoning. Our hearts go out to those children whose lives forever have been changed by the poisonous presence of lead. But, however grave the problem of lead poisoning is in Rhode Island, public nuisance law simply does not provide a remedy for this harm. The state has not and cannot allege facts that would fall within the parameters of what would constitute public nuisance under Rhode Island law.” 
 
PCI Applauds Decision 
 
“This ruling is significant in that it deliberately respects the boundaries between the judiciary and legislative branches,” said David Golden, director of commercial lines for PCI. “By sticking to the facts of the case and law as it is written, the court rejected the notion of unwarranted judicial intervention. The Court recognized that it is bound by the law and reinforced the concept that product liability cases should continue to be tried under negligence law, rather than using the lower standards of proof found in public nuisance law. Finally, the Rhode Island Legislature has already addressed the issue of abatement and found that the responsibility lies with the landlord and property owners, not the paint manufacturers whose products could not be tied directly to specific injuries. We are hopeful that other courts that face similar issues such as climate change will follow the restraint shown by the Rhode Island Court. In so doing they help minimize the ability of personal injury lawyers to use public nuisance as the new legal theory of the day in attacking the business community.” 
 
NAMIC Agrees with Supreme Court's Ruling 
 
The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) agrees, stating in its press release that by reversing a lower court’s decision that found lead pigment manufacturers liable for childhood lead poisoning under public nuisance law, the Rhode Island Supreme Court prevented an unwarranted, dangerous, and unpredictable expansion of liability. 
 
“This decision reestablishes that product liability laws – not public nuisance laws – are the proper means for claims against product manufacturers,” said Paul Tetrault, NAMIC’s Northeast state affairs manager. “The court has rejected another attempt by a state attorney general to improperly use public nuisance laws to circumvent the well-defined structure of product liability laws.”