Lead Paint Lawsuit Article  

Landlords, Housing Authority sued over lead

Charleston, S.C.
ROBERT BEHRE
Jan 31, 1999

Copyright The Post and Courier Jan 31, 1999

Dozens of Charleston landlords are facing lawsuits alleging that lead paint in their apartments poisoned children.

Attorney Mark Tanenbaum has worked on lead paint cases since 1994 and recently filed 45 lawsuits. His firm - which now is working with the nationally-known mass litigation firm of Ness, Motley, Loadholt, Richardson & Poole - expects to file another 50 cases within a few weeks.

"We're concentrating on the kids with the most significant (lead) exposure because that will make the landlords realize that if they don't clean up their property, they're going to get stung," Tanenbaum said.

Tanenbaum said the vast majority of the plaintiffs haven't reached their 20th birthday, and most are between 6 and 8 years old.

Exposure to lead can cause a myriad of health problems, including permanent damage to the nervous system, reduced intelligence and attention span, stunted growth, and learning and behavior problems.

"Most of the kids we're working with now are in learning disabled classes," Tanenbaum said.

The cases are not a class action suit because they involve different children who lived in different homes. "The only thing in common is lead paint, and it's a poison," he said.

Tanenbaum has settled five or six lead cases, but he declined to give the settlement amounts. He said he expects each current case to result in a substantial six- or seven-figure sum for his clients.

"I think landlords who continue to rent their property after notice (of lead contamination) are looking at tremendous exposure, as they should be," he said.

Tanenbaum said the suits name as defendants all property owners who rented to the plaintiffs and whose property tested positive for lead. Many of the 45 lawsuits have more than one defendant, and most defendants are private landlords.

The Charleston Housing Authority is named as a defendant in 15 of the lawsuits.

Housing Authority Director Don Cameron said he was aware of the lawsuits, which have been sent to the S.C. Insurance Reserve Fund, the city's insurer against lawsuits.

Cameron said the authority gave priority to tenants who had a child with an elevated lead level or who were living in structurally unsound buildings. Both instances meant the Housing Authority was likely to have rented to children with lead problems.

"In one of the suits, we gave the family priority and moved them in because the health department had evidence that the child had lead poisoning. Now, we're one of the people being sued. Our own priorities have made us a defendant," he said.

In the 1980s the authority had units with underlying layers of lead paint, but state law said if that paint was encapsulated - if it wasn't peeling, flaking off or falling on the ground where a child could put it in their mouth - then it was deemed safe.

"To our knowledge, we complied with the federal laws of our time and with the state laws," Cameron said. He added that the authority finished removing all lead paint a few years ago when it finished renovating Meeting Street Manor.

Edward K. Pritchard III, a lawyer who defended lead poisoning cases other than the 45 recently filed, said the science behind these lead poisoning suits is controversial.

"High blood lead levels are bad. That's clear. Where that blood lead level gets to be high is at a point of a lot of debate," he said.

Many of Tanenbaum's clients lived in public housing or in the city's poorest neighborhoods. Pritchard said that many of these children may have other strikes against them that contribute to IQ loss. And measuring the IQ's of small children is difficult.

"When you have a 4 year old, you don't really know what that child's IQ was pre-exposure. There might not be any difference. There might be a huge difference. Nobody really knows. That's the big problem with these cases. You never really know what you're dealing with," he said.

Tanenbaum's clients all were renters, and Pritchard noted that a child poisoned in a home that his parents own doesn't have an avenue to sue. "That's an interesting dichotomy," he said.

The city of Charleston has sought a $3 million grant to help hundreds of property owners grapple with lead paint, but it has been rejected twice in two years.

Tanenbaum said the Charleston County Lead Program has done a good job identifying lead poisoned children and helping them find more healthy housing. But its crackdown on landlords who haven't fixed their lead problem has been a mixed bag.

Recent testing shows that the lead paint problem in Charleston - while it still exists - is becoming more rare.

In 1997, 2,366 Charleston children were screened, and 69 - or almost 3 percent - had elevated lead levels. That was down sharply from 123 cases in 1993 and 196 cases in 1994.

Tanenbaum said he hopes the lawsuits help continue that trend. He already has heard from some insurance officials and landlords concerned about the legal ramifications.

The initial batch of cases includes plaintiffs whose lead poisoning exceeded a level of 30 micrograms per deciliter. He also has about 400 more cases where the level is between 30 micrograms and 10 micrograms - the minimum level at which a child's blood level is considered high.

Tanenbaum said his lead team includes 20 investigators, paralegals and administrative people in addition to three lawyers working on it full-time.

Credit: The Post and Courier

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