Paint or Stain?
Earlier this year, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch made a splash when a jury found some paint companies liable to clean up all of the lead-based paint in Rhode Island—a billion dollar job. Curiously, DuPont was let out of the tort suit (before verdict) when it gave $9M to the Children’s Health Forum, a nonprofit organization focused on preventing childhood exposure to lead.
In June, it came to light that DuPont had given some campaign cash to General Lynch.
Now, it appears that Children’s Health Forum and DuPont are kissin’ cousins, and have been for quite some time.
Mr. Lynch’s paint industry dealin’ and litigatin’ and litigulatin’ need a whitewash. The twenty-eight-years-after-the-fact squeeze on paint manufacturers was bad law and terrible policy, but the subsequent revelations add strokes of malice to the already dirty scene.
Power corrupts, but post facto extraterritorial jurisdiction corrupts absolutely.