California Lead Paint Lawsuit: $305M Settlement and Insurance Ruling

The California lead paint lawsuit settlement is a $305 million deal reached in July 2019 that ended nearly two decades of litigation by ten California cities and counties against three paint manufacturers, and the money is now paying to remove lead paint from older homes across the state.¹²³

Who Sued, and on What Theory

The case, The People v. ConAgra Grocery Products Company et al., was filed in 2000 by ten California jurisdictions: Santa Clara, Alameda, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Mateo, Solano, and Ventura counties, plus the cities of Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco.⁴ They originally named five defendants: Sherwin-Williams, NL Industries, ConAgra, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), and DuPont.⁵

Rather than suing on a product liability theory, the plaintiffs brought the case as a public nuisance action. The distinction mattered. Earlier lead paint suits in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Illinois, and Missouri had failed, often because plaintiffs could not tie specific paint in a specific home to a specific manufacturer decades after the fact.⁶ California’s theory sidestepped that problem. The claim was that the companies’ decades of promoting lead paint for interior residential use, while knowing it was toxic, created an ongoing hazard to public health.⁷

Internal industry documents were central to the plaintiffs’ case. A 1900 Sherwin-Williams publication called white lead a “deadly cumulative poison,” and a 1955 Lead Industries Association letter described lead poisoning as “mainly a slum problem.”⁸ Plaintiffs also showed CDC data that 10,875 children across the ten jurisdictions had been lead-poisoned in 2009 alone.⁹

What the Courts Decided

On December 16, 2013, after a seven-week bench trial, Judge James P. Kleinberg of Santa Clara Superior Court ruled that Sherwin-Williams, NL Industries, and ConAgra were liable for creating a public nuisance. He found their promotional activities “inherently misleading because [they] implicitly asserted that [lead paint] was safe for such use when it was not.”⁴ Claims against ARCO and DuPont were dismissed for insufficient evidence that they sold lead paint for use in California homes.¹⁰

Judge Kleinberg ordered the three liable defendants to pay $1.15 billion into an abatement fund for inspecting homes and removing lead paint, with Los Angeles County receiving the largest share at roughly $632.5 million.¹¹ It was described at the time as the largest public nuisance award in California history.¹²

On November 15, 2017, California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the liability finding but narrowed the judgment. The appellate court concluded there was insufficient evidence that the defendants had actively promoted lead paint for interior residential use after 1950, so it struck the portion covering homes built from 1951 to 1980 and sent the case back to recalculate abatement costs for pre-1951 housing only.⁷⁸¹³

The Settlement Terms

NL Industries settled separately in May 2018 for $60 million. The plaintiffs described the figure as reflecting NL’s “ability to pay” rather than its share of liability, with county counsel stating the $45 million cash portion represented nearly all of NL’s liquid resources. The remaining $15 million came from insurance proceeds already on deposit with the trial court.¹⁴¹⁵

On July 10, 2019, all three defendants reached the final global settlement of $305 million, paid in six annual installments of $75 million. Each company’s share was approximately $101.7 million, and none admitted wrongdoing or liability.²³ The number came in well below both the original $1.15 billion judgment and the roughly $409 million the appellate court had left in place, but it ended the litigation and locked in a defined payout.

How the Money Is Divided and Spent

The $305 million was split among the ten jurisdictions based on the amount of housing with lead paint in each area.¹³¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

Each jurisdiction has set up a free or low-cost abatement program for qualifying older homes. The specifics vary, but the general model is an inspection followed by professional removal paid for by the settlement fund.

Los Angeles County

The $133 million is managed by the Department of Public Health and the Los Angeles County Development Authority through Lead Free Homes LA. The program offers free inspections and lead paint removal for homes built before 1951, prioritizes households with children under six, covers interior and exterior hazards, and offers temporary relocation during repairs when needed.¹⁹

Santa Clara County

Santa Clara County has partnered with Habitat for Humanity East Bay Silicon Valley on its Lead Safe Homes Program, which offers free inspections and repairs for homes built before 1978.¹⁷

San Mateo County

San Mateo County receives its $11.7 million in annual installments through 2025 and works with Rebuilding Together Peninsula. The program began with a three-to-five-home pilot before scaling to a target of 20 to 25 homes per year, focused on lower-income families in pre-1950 housing. The county estimates it has more than 50,000 housing units built before 1950 and over 150,000 built before 1980.¹⁸

San Diego

San Diego’s $15 million funds inspection, abatement, and temporary relocation for residential properties built before 1978 in low- to moderate-income areas. Property owners at or below 80% of area median income receive services at no charge; those above that threshold pay a share of the cost.¹⁶

The Insurance Fight Sherwin-Williams Lost

Sherwin-Williams tried to recover its roughly $102 million share from its insurers, including underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, Zurich, and units of AIG and Chubb, in a coverage dispute it had opened in Ohio state court back in 2006. On December 10, 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the insurers. Justice Joseph T. Deters wrote that the abatement fund payments were not “damages” under the company’s commercial general liability policies, because the money was meant to prevent future harm to children rather than to compensate for past injuries or property damage.² The decision tracked a broader 2024 trend of courts declining to extend general liability coverage to forward-looking remediation costs.²⁰

Why the California Outcome Stands Alone

No other state has produced a comparable result. Courts in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Illinois, and Missouri rejected public nuisance claims against paint manufacturers, with the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruling in 2008 that public nuisance law had never before been applied to products and should not be.⁶²¹ California jurisdictions have reportedly fielded inquiries from local governments elsewhere interested in trying similar cases, and in 2025 the Milwaukee School Board was weighing litigation to recover $1.8 million spent on lead cleanup at seven schools, though legal experts noted that proving which manufacturer’s paint is in a given building remains a steep hurdle.²² The Ohio insurance ruling adds a second obstacle: if abatement payouts cannot be shifted to insurers, future defendants face the full cost themselves.

1
Motley Rice. Lead Pigment Settlement Reached in CA Cities and Counties
2
Supreme Court of Ohio. Sherwin-Williams Co. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London, 2024-Ohio-5773
3
LA County Counsel. Lead Paint Litigation Provides $133 Million for Lead Paint Abatement
4
Santa Clara County Newsroom. Court of Appeal Upholds Landmark Judgment Ordering Removal of Lead Paint From Pre-1951 Homes
5
Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. People of the State of California v. Atlantic Richfield Company et al., Case No. 1-00-CV-788657
6
Maryland General Assembly. Lead Paint Testimony
7
Environmental Defense Fund. California Court Decision on Lead-Based Paint
8
Mother Jones. Lead Paint Toxic Lawsuit California
9
Public Justice. Attorneys Who Won Landmark Lead Paint Judgment and Cleanup Named Public Justice Trial Lawyers of the Year
10
Investigate Midwest. Stunning Loss for Lead Paint Makers in California Lawsuit
11
LA County Department of Public Health. Lead Paint Public Nuisance Ruling
12
CPM Legal. CPM Prevails as Judge Holds Companies Liable for Lead Paint
13
SCOTUSblog. The Sherwin-Williams Co. v. California
14
Santa Clara County Newsroom. Statement of Counsel on Behalf of the People of the State of California Regarding Settlement With NL Industries
15
California State Assembly. Lead Paint Legislative Testimony
16
Times of San Diego. City Offers Lead Paint Removal Services With $15M in Settlement Funds
17
Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health. Learn About the Lead Safe Homes Program
18
San Mateo County. San Mateo County Establishes Program to Remove Lead Paint From Residential Properties
19
Lead Free Homes LA. Lead Free Homes LA
20
American College of Coverage Counsel. Ohio Justices Undo Paint Maker’s Lead Coverage Win
21
Tyson Mendes. Lead Paint Public Nuisance Litigation
22
Wisconsin Public Radio. Milwaukee School Board Considers Suing Paint Companies Over Lead Crisis