May 31, 2007

Trial began Tuesday in a state courtroom; the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's coverage is here, and Jane Genova is again blogging the day-by-day developments, as she did in the previous Rhode Island trial. This time around the defense is apparently going to lay greater stress than previously on the government's own role in promoting the material. Quoting the Journal-Sentinel:

After lead paint was banned in Baltimore in 1951, the first ban of its kind in the country, [defense lawyer Donald Scott] said, NL and the Lead Industry Association initiated a labeling standard.

"But the City of Milwaukee continued to specify lead paint for its architects and projects for the next 20 years," Scott said.

As we have had occasion to note elsewhere, a surprising number of products later sued over as defective and injurious do turn out to have been promoted for use by the government itself.