The Bloomberg View columnist discusses the new ruling by a California state judge that companies that once made lead paint, and their successors, owe a billion dollars plus to California counties and cities over marketing of lead paint as long ago as the 1920s and earlier. I’m quoted:
As Walter Olson of the Cato Institute noted to me in an e-mail, “Many of the key business decisions being sued over took place closer to Abraham Lincoln’s time than to our own, and if the companies had gone to twenty leading lawyers of the day and asked, `could this ever lead to nuisance liability under such-and-such facts’ would have been told `of course not.'” Can you really sue a company for doing something that was well within the law? Or, as in one case, a company that bought a company that did something that was well within the law? As Olson points out, “when ConAgra bought Beatrice Foods, most business observers never even realized there was the tiny sliver of a paint company in there among the household food brands, but that one little sliver of successor liability could far exceed the then-value of all the rest.”
More from @Popehat on Twitter: “My wrongful death suit against Mongolia for Genghis Khan’s crimes against my ancestors moves forward!”