Milwaukee v NL - "The status quo has failed," claims Lewis

"The status quo has failed, and that's why we're here," claims plaintiff lead attorney Richard Lewis in his opening statement for City of Milwaukee v NL Industries. That's exactly the position the plaintiff in the Rhode Island lead paint trial took.  And in both cases that might be proved to be inaccurate and deliver a fatal hit to the plaintiff's credibility.

The status quo is remarkably successful, counters defense lead attorney Donald Scott in his opening remarks.  Scott refers to the "number."  That number is, of course, the new cases of an elevated level of lead in the blood of children.  Elevated is usually designed as 10 or above. 

Scott indicates that since 1991 lead levels in Milwaukee have fallen significantly from 83 percent to 6.6 percent in 2006. And the status quo modus operandi was not running around abating lead paint but simply educating the public how to behave around this potential hazard.  The solution is already in-place and it is working just fine, thank you.

In Rhode Island, the status quo has also been working just fine, thank you.  That was concealed from the jury during the recent lead paint trial.  Numbers from the LESS database showed a dramatic decline in new cases.  The jury was not told that and that is part of the grounds for the defense's appeal to the RI Supreme Court.

More recently, another decline in new cases was announced in late May by the RI Department of Health. As reported in "Childhood Lead Poisoning in Rhode Island: The Numbers 2007 Edition," in 2006, a total of 500 new cases of lead poisoning were recorded.  That represents a drop from 621 new cases in 2005 and 1,167 new cases in 2004.

It's curious why Lewis is taking this stance, that is, an attack on the status quo, when it has been so discredited in the RI lead paint trial.