Any column that wonders in its headline whether a lawsuit was filed in "the pursuit of justice, or money?" probably doesn't have a searing critical perspective on the law. I read it anyway because I read New York Times stories about law the way uptown youth watch Gossip Girl.
Lead is bad for children. Lead paint was banned in 1978, plus cities and states have mandated that landlords keep their buildings freshly painted so that kids don't come across lead paint chips. But that wasn't a perfect solution. There's still lead paint on a lot of walls which one way or another ends up getting eaten. So lawyers have been suing paint companies about it, and in Rhode Island they teamed up with the AG. (Full disclosure: Rhode Island sabotaged any chance I might have had at an interesting adolescence.)
From one of the plaintiff's witnesses, the columnist gets what he apparently thinks is his money quote: “The removal of paint from apartment buildings is expensive. States and cities are chronically underfunded. So basically, getting a judgment against the companies is a way to get revenue to do the removal.” This proves that lawyers are just in it for the money!
According to my research, though, lawyers are allowed to be in it for the money. So are public lawyers, because Rhode Island is allowed to try to get money. Sometimes they even do it through a Taxation System, though they're moving away from that model.
The reason this lawsuit happened was because there was a problem that the government hadn't adequately addressed. The legislature didn't pass enough laws over the past thirty years to get rid of lead paint, or the ones they did, weren't enforced by agencies. So an opportunity opened for litigation.
If you want to reduce litigation, calling lawyers opportunistic won't do anything. Eliminating their opportunities will. So argue for higher taxes and more bureaucracy, Mr. Talking Business Columnist. It's a matter of simple hydraulics. To drain money from the judicial system, unstop other parts of government.
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