Jury selection began in the retrial of Rhode Island’s landmark lawsuit against former manufacturers of lead paint. The trial, the state’s second in three years against the lead paint industry, is expected to last several months. An earlier trial against former lead paint manufacturers ended in a mistrial in 2002. The state says the presence of lead-based paint in homes and buildings created a public nuisance and led to the poisoning of thousands of children. The defendants say landlords and homeowners who fail to keep up their properties are more to blame. Lead paint was banned in 1978. The defendants in the case are the Sherwin-Williams Co., American Cyanamid Co., Millennium Holdings LLC, NL Industries Inc. and Atlantic Richfield Co. Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein agreed to sever American Cyanamid from the case, meaning the company remains a defendant but will be tried separately at the conclusion of this trial. American Cyanamid lawyer Jerry Petros had argued that the company should not be tried alongside the other defendants because it was not part of the Lead Industries Association.
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