Patrick Blanks v. Fluor Corporation, 450 S.W.3d 308 (2014)

Citation: Patrick Blanks v. Fluor Corporation, 450 S.W.3d 308 (2014)
Parent Document: Patrick Blanks v. Fluor Corporation, 450 S.W.3d 308 (2014)
Jurisdiction: Missouri (state)
Effective Date: 2014-09-16
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2733178/patrick-blanks-v-fluor-corporation/ ↗

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The first president of LIA was also president of the St. Joseph Lead Company, which operated the
smelter. He was replaced in the late 1940s by another executive from St. Joseph. The secretary of the
association during the twenties, thirties, and forties was also from St. Joseph. This involvement in the
association’s leadership continued into the partnership period. Jeffrey Zelms, president of Doe Run, served
as president and chairman of the LIA during the partnership period. Daniel Vornberg, the partnership’s
director of environmental affairs, served on the association’s environmental health committee throughout
the 1980s and early 1990s. The partnership itself, upon formation in October of 1986, agreed that the
company become a member and participate in the LIA.
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The association’s efforts were numerous and wide-ranging. From the beginning, they approached
legislators who were concerned about lead and asked them not to pass legislation. They visited and
challenged physicians who claimed that their young patients had been poisoned by lead, insisting that the
physicians were mistaken and that what they were seeing was not really lead poisoning. The association
even threatened physicians with libel suits if the physicians persisted in their claim that children were being
poisoned by lead. In one famous example from 1943, the association threatened Dr. Byers of Boston with a
million-dollar suit. Byers, a Harvard physician, had published a widely-publicized article about children
who were poisoned by lead and had permanent damage. In that report, Dr. Byers stated that hyperactivity
and attention problems were a lasting legacy of having ingested lead. Dr. Byers felt so threatened by the
association that he did not publish another article about lead for ten years. The association, from its
inception, was also active on the public-relations front. In the 1930s, the association ran a massive
promotional campaign to promote the use of lead paint and shape public opinion in favor of lead paint,
even though numerous medical articles showed that children were being poisoned by lead paint. The lead
industry strenuously opposed efforts to remove lead from paint and gasoline at every turn, from as early as
the 1920s. They argued that the movement to remove the lead was in response to researchers who did not
understand the social, economic, or health effects of low-level lead exposures. Indeed, by claiming that it
could not be shown that lead posed a long-term danger, the industry managed to get lead back in gasoline
after a two-year ban in the 1920s. The industry’s opposition persisted for 50-60 years, until the late 1970s
and early 1980s, when lead was finally removed from paint and gasoline.

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