Just as some of us lead-paint lawsuit watchers were opining the beginning of the end, in California San Mateo County joined a few other counties in the state in their lawsuit filed in 2000. This is news because anything happening in trend-setting CA is news.
But when new CA Attorney General Jerry Brown takes over the whole litigation scene can change. Brown stated that he intends to follow common sense. From his and other newly elected state AGs' remarks it seems that the activist stance established by NY AG Eliot Spitzer and RI AG Patrick Lynch is yesterday. So this move by San Mateo County could be analogous to that Japanese warrior holdouts who assumed that war was still going on and kept their rifles in good condition.
In THE MERCURY NEWS (11/15/06), Rebekah Gordon reports that the 2000 suit has been filed against the usual suspects, ranging from ARCO and Sherwin-Williams to American Cyanamid and ConAgra Grocery. Interestingly, DuPont is also named as a defendant. That agreement DuPont created with RI AG Lynch to get off the hook from going on trial in RI lead paint II hasn't seemed to have helped it elsewhere. Know what else is being sued? The Lead Industries Association, which the Motley Rice plaintiff attorneys in RI lead paint II attempted to depict as a cabal of conspiracy. The judge threw that out.
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