PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Three former lead paint manufacturers asked Rhode Island's highest court on Thursday to overturn a jury verdict that could force them to pay billions of dollars to clean up contaminated older properties around the state.
The companies, in papers filed with the state Supreme Court, said the judge excluded relevant evidence from the trial and permitted testimony they consider prejudicial.
They said the jury was allowed to rule against the companies without evidence that their products had been used on any particular building in the state or had even been sold in Rhode Island.
"The end result was a trial so stacked in plaintiff's favor that defendants effectively were forced to defend themselves with both hands tied behind their backs, while attempting to strike at a moving target," lawyers for one of the defendants,
A jury two years ago found Sherwin-Williams,
The state wants the companies to pay an estimated $2.4 billion to remove lead paint contamination from roughly 240,000 homes believed to still contain the toxic substance. A judge has named two public health experts to review the state's proposal and make recommendations.
The state argued during the trial that the presence of lead paint in homes and buildings in Rhode Island created a public nuisance that continues to poison children while burdening homeowners and taxpayers forced to deal with the problem.
Children who ingest flaking paint chips or dust can suffer health problems including reduced intelligence and brain damage. The state Health Department says tens of thousands of Rhode Island children have reported elevated blood lead levels since the early 1990s.
But the companies, in their court papers, said the state's public nuisance theory allowed it to unfairly claim a major health problem existed without identifying any individual properties it believed contained lead paint -- which was banned from U.S homes in 1978. They said the jury did not have to find that the companies acted negligently or determine how much, if any, of the manufacturers' lead pigment and paint remained in Rhode Island.
Jack McConnell, a lawyer for the state, noted that one of the state's expert witnesses had testified that each of the companies had once sold and promoted their products in Rhode Island. He said the state's case had always been focused on the cumulative harm caused by lead paint rather than on individual properties.
"They constantly wanted us to be required to show particular companies' paint on a particular wall in Rhode Island -- and that's not the public nuisance claim that the state brought," McConnell said of the defendants.
The state will have an opportunity to respond to the companies' appeal, and the Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for May 15. A decision is expected this summer.
In addition, the companies said Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein erred by not letting the jury consider if property owners should be held responsible for failing to maintain their buildings, as required by law, and for putting their tenants at risk for lead exposure.
They also said the judge permitted inflammatory evidence into the trial, including a 1950s trade association document that referred to lead poisoning as a problem limited to "slum" homes and mostly affecting black and minority children.
NL Industries warned that the verdict, if upheld, could set a dangerous precedent that could extend beyond the paint companies.
"It will reach manufacturers of products that have little or no known health impact today, but that science in five, or twenty, or fifty years finds to be unsafe for certain of their intended uses," lawyers for the company wrote.
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