$2 Million Settlement: Manhattan Landlord Ran Botched Lead Abatement for Years

The child was born in August 2008 and lived with his mother in a pre-war Manhattan apartment building. The day after his birth, the landlord sent workers in to repair sheetrock damaged by a water leak, the first of many disturbances to walls and ceilings that contained lead paint. By his second birthday his blood lead level had climbed to 8. His mother had been contacting the city about water leaks and crumbling paint, and his grandmother had asked the landlord directly to test the apartment because the toddler was mouthing the windowsills. Nothing changed.

The landlord's defense centered on documentation: abatement records, a hired painting contractor, and multiple 'lead-free' reports from a testing company. Adam Orlow, the firm's Senior Trial Partner, worked through those records and showed they contradicted each other at every turn. The abatement company entered the apartment three separate times; city inspectors found lead again after each visit. The testing company declared the apartment clean four times; government dust-wipe results came back positive each time. In one documented sequence, city testing found lead, the testing company went back days later and declared the apartment clean without any additional remediation, and two weeks after that the child's blood lead level climbed back to 40.

The underlying work was also non-compliant in ways the records obscured. The landlord ran certified abatement and uncertified painting simultaneously, sending an outside worker into the apartment to paint and plaster while abatement was still in progress. New York City lead-safety law required certified workers, sealed work areas, plastic sheeting, and posted warnings; none of those conditions were met. The mother and child were never offered temporary housing during the work, though the law required it, and the landlord failed to conduct the annual inspections required for any apartment with a young child in residence.

By July 2011, the child's blood lead level reached 55, a level the CDC classifies as a medical emergency. An X-ray found paint chips in his abdomen and he was admitted for chelation therapy. He carried a pre-existing diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder; the firm's experts addressed only harm above and beyond that baseline condition. A pediatric neurology expert concluded the lead exposure cost him up to 30 IQ points. A neuropsychology expert determined the resulting brain damage worsened his capacity to acquire the adaptive skills he would have needed to live more independently as an adult. The firm recovered $2 million to fund the child's lifetime care.