After key donations, GOP tried to keep poisoned kids from suing lead makers

Source: Ars Technica

Between 2011 and 2012, large, secret donations from the billionaire owner of one of America’s leading lead producers provided critical support to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-led legislature as they weathered recall elections. Not coincidentally, around that time the lawmakers passed two laws that would effectively make it impossible for childhood victims of lead poisoning to sue lead companies, according to leaked documents obtained by The Guardian.

Since the laws were passed, federal courts have overturned key elements of them, ruling them unconstitutional and allowing legal challenges to go forward. However, if the laws had stayed in effect, it would have spared lead industries from potentially paying out millions in damages to hundreds of victims who were exposed to extremely high doses of the poisonous metal through paint during childhood...

...Under the two Wisconsin laws, Clark’s negligence suit would have been thrown out. The first of the laws, enacted in early 2011, required any new alleged victim to definitively prove that the company they were suing was responsible for making the exact paint that they inhaled or ingested at the time of their poisoning—basically an impossible feat given multiple paint layers within houses and exposures that occurred long ago in childhood. The second law, slipped into a 2013 budget bill at the last minute, made sure the rule applied not just to new lawsuits, but pending ones as well. Together, the laws would render lead producers and lead paint manufacturers effectively immune to all lawsuits.

According to the leaked documents—which were assembled during a state investigation into alleged campaign finance violations—the GOP got several key donations in between those two legislative moves. Harold Simmons, the billionaire owner of NL industries, a leading producer of lead previously used for lead paints, wrote three checks, totaling $750,000, during that time. The checks were made out to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, then run by one of Gov. Walker’s top advisors.

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/after-key-donations-gop-tried-to-keep-poisoned-kids-from-suing-lead-makers/