Family wins 6.6M in lead poisoning fight

Daily News
By Salvatore Arena
March 24, 2000

Family wins 6.6M in fight over son's lead poisoning

A Manhattan jury yesterday awarded $6.6 million to a teenage boy who got lead poisoning in a city housing project built 13 years after a municipal ban on lead paint.

James Woolfalk, 14, won the damages after a three-week trial in state Supreme Court.

The Youth's family argued in a lawsuit filed in 1992 against the city Housing Authority that exposure to lead in their East Harlem apartment left James severely brain-damaged.

He was initially diagnosed with elevated levels of lead in his blood in 1988, when he was 3 years old.

Experts said at the trail that the teen has an IQ of 70 and functions at the level of an 8-year-old.

He still lives with his parents, two brothers and a sister in the same apartment at the Jackie Robinson Houses in East Harlem.

The project was built in 1973, about 13 years after lead-based paints were outlawed in New York, according to Richard Shandell, an attorney for the Woolfalk family.

Shandell said Health Department tests detected high levels of lead dust around the windows in the apartment. The source of the dust remains unclear.

The Housing Authority argued that lead levels in the apartment were not high enough to cause the boy's injuries.

A jury of three men and three women ordered the Housing Authority to pay $4.5 million for James' lifetime care, $1.2 million for past and future pain and suffering, and $900,000 for loss of earnings.

The Woolfalk family reaction to the verdict was subdued.

"Actually, we're sad," said the father, James Tyrone Woolfalk, 40, "because this is something that shouldn't have happened."

Caring for his son has been "extremely difficulty, and we're faced with daily challenges," Woolfalk said. "Hopefully, this will send a message that in our urban areas it is essential that close attention is paid to problems like this."

The Housing Authority's attorney, Paul Bottari, said an appeal is planned.