PROVIDENCE — A state
judge declared a mistrial after a Rhode Island jury said it was
unable to reach a verdict on whether DuPont Co., Sherwin-Williams
Co. and other lead-paint makers should be considered a public
nuisance.
Judge Michael Silverstein sent the jurors home after four
days of deliberation ended in deadlock. Rhode Island officials
said they will retry the companies in a bid to force them to pay
millions of dollars to remove decades-old lead paint from homes
and public buildings. DuPont and Sherwin-Williams shares rose
after the mistrial was announced.
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“Upon review of the evidence, we are unable to reach a
unanimous decision,” the jury said in a note to Silverstein. “It
appears that continued deliberations would not change the vote.”
The state was seeking to establish that lead paint is a
public hazard to make it easier to force the companies to pay
clean-up costs. A victory would have made it unnecessary in
subsequent trials to identify which brand of paint was on a
particular building in order to win clean-up costs.
Attorneys general in New Jersey, West Virginia and
Massachusetts had monitored the trial to help determine whether
they should file similar claims. Lead-based paint has been linked
by scientists to brain damage in children.
Sherwin-Williams shares rose $3.51, more than 14 percent, to
$28.07 at 3:35 p.m. in composite trading on the New York Stock
Exchange. DuPont shares rose $1.05, or 2.6 percent, to $41.65.
Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse said he will
seek a retrial “within a matter of weeks.”
John Tarantino, a lawyer for Atlantic Richfield Co., said the
defendants would be ready. “This shows that litigation is not the
solution to this problem,” he said. “If it’s the same case and
the same issue, we’ll be ready.”
The case was filed in 1999 in state court in Rhode Island
against Sherwin-Williams; DuPont; Atlantic Richfield, a unit of
U.K.-based oil company BP Plc; Houston-based NL Industries; Wayne,
New Jersey-based American Cyanamid Co., a unit of Germany’s BASF
AG; and SCM Chemicals of New York.
Bloomberg News
