The "State's Newspaper" Must Have Missed This.

The Attorney General has no authority to make a settlement that "gives" consumers a tax holiday.

So you want businesses to 'follow the laws and stop cheating West Virginians out of their health and their wealth' but you have no problem whatsoever that the AG doesn't abide by the same standards, right Frank!!!

With nearly 300 employees to try and find some sort of work for, no wonder he goes after so many businesses.

What's wrong with sending those settlements to the Treasury?

It is the manner in which he does it, the use of taxpayer money to purchase campaign paraphernalia (which is illegal)

and the distribution of the settlements, which the federal government has said is wrong based on their withholding of Medicare reimbursement funds.

It was the state legislature that "gave" consumers a tax holiday.

Will you concede that he is pushing the limits of ethics with regard to no-bid contracts, contracts to his contributors, and settlements that do not reward his aggrieved clients?

ohio county wrote:There's always hope. If all WVians were as malleable as you, we might actually have something here. You're thinking (like me) why don't WVians see? You're on the look out.

See where Teddy is on the prowl over at the WVGazette.com?

I can't help but wonder if some voters think they may be better off with the devil they know and it isn't all apathy.

McGraw's lead balloon


4/18/2008 12:53 PM



Feel like doing the fighting for the trial bar?

Thanks to State Attorney General Darrell McGraw, we West Virginians have joined another trial lawyer-concocted fracas, this one against the entire $21 billion, 354,000-employee U.S. paint industry.

This week, McGraw joined an amicus brief in the Rhode Island Supreme Court, quietly bestowing the blessing of all West Virginians upon his crusading counterpart, that state's Attorney General Patrick Lynch, who wants a cool $2.4 billion to abate the problem.

Led by mega-plaintiff's firm Motley Rice, Lynch is supporting a state-powered assault against the largest paint manufacturers in
America. He's accusing them of creating a "public nuisance" by making and selling lead paint many decades ago when it was legal and society's only available option.

Lead paint was banned by the federal government in 1978; neither Lynch nor McGraw nor any of the professional grievance-makers at Motley Rice allege the companies in their crosshairs, household names like Dutch Boy and Sherwin-Williams, has broken the law.

There is no specific evidence in the case that anyone has been hurt by the paint companies' pre-1978 paint, or that lead paint's existence on older structures threatens a health epidemic.

Some of the paint is still out there. One coat of post-1978 paint over the old, and the threat is gone. How many locations haven't been painted in 30 years?

But simple, practical solutions might obstruct the ambitions of trial lawyers hunting for jackpot justice. In lead paint, they smell another
tobacco payday--a lever through which they corral the heft of the state to produce hundreds of millions in fees from law-abiding companies. For men like Lynch and McGraw, the prospect is mouthwatering.

The promise here is money--not just for trial lawyers, but for politicians, too. Too often, the legal fees trickle down via plaintiff's firms to their favorite politicians' campaigns.

Since they started working with AG Lynch, the partners of Motley Rice, based in Charleston, South Carolina, have become some of Rhode Island's leading campaign contributors. Sound familiar?

When Darrell McGraw crosses state lines, going out of his way to take such outlandish, tyrannical positions, he discredits not just his own reputation but that of our state. If we want West Virginia to be taken seriously as a place that means business, this anti-corporate crusading must stop.

source

There is no specific evidence in the case that anyone has been hurt by the paint companies' pre-1978 paint, or that lead paint's existence on older structures threatens a health epidemic.

Some of the paint is still out there. One coat of post-1978 paint over the old, and the threat is gone. How many locations haven't been painted in 30 years?