$5 Million Settlement: Infant Lead Poisoning in Foster Care Home

In early 1999, a foster care agency placed a child who was just under a year old into a Brooklyn foster home. At that stage he was starting to crawl and walk, and like any baby he put whatever he found into his mouth. The home contained lead paint.

On August 16, 1999, the child's blood lead level tested at 32, six times the CDC's danger level. The New York City Department of Health inspected the foster home and identified lead paint in 29 separate locations. The agency did not remove the child. It also knew the foster mother was actively renovating and painting the apartment while the child remained inside with a documented elevated lead level. Only a month later, after a second blood test returned a level of 54.6, nearly eleven times the CDC threshold, did the agency remove him. He was hospitalized for six days.

The case centered on what the agency knew and when it acted. Adam Orlow, Senior Trial Partner, built the theory around the agency's own files. The blood test dates, the Department of Health inspection findings, and the records confirming the ongoing renovation were all in the agency's possession. Those documents showed that the agency had information requiring removal long before it acted. The firm pursued both the foster care agency and the City of New York.

In the years after removal, the child required continuous treatment for severe developmental disorders: diagnoses of severe ADHD and an impulsivity disorder, substantial cognitive delays, and episodes of violence that led to seven psychiatric hospitalizations. At age seventeen he was functioning at a third-grade level and placed in special education. The $5 million settlement was built to pay for a lifetime of supervised housing, ongoing medical treatment, and day-to-day care.