Deformed Boy Wins Lawsuit : Jury Awards Him $3.9 Million in Lead Spray Case

A 10-year-old boy born with severe deformities has been awarded $3.9 million by a jury that found his problems were caused by lead spray from a manufacturing plant that contaminated his mother’s home-grown vegetables in West Los Angeles.

The award handed down Wednesday will pay for lifetime medical bills and caretaking that Marcos Franco will need and will compensate him for his lost earnings, said his attorney, Roger L. Gordon, who called the award “fair and reasonable.”

“He can’t take care of himself. . . . He’ll never know the value of a dollar; he’ll probably never work,” Gordon said of Marcos, who now lives with his family in Van Nuys.

Marcos suffers from damage to his brain, nervous system and heart, Gordon said. He is deaf, blind in one eye and has to wear a back brace, the attorney added.

A lawyer for the defendant, O’Hommel Co. of Pittsburgh, said he will seek to have the verdict overturned. The suit in Santa Monica Superior Court was filed in 1984 against O’Hommel and Duraspan Inc., a now-defunct West Los Angeles mirror manufacturer that settled out of court.

Fuses to Glass

O’Hommel Co. manufactures frit, an enamel-like substance containing lead that Duraspan used in its products. Sprayed onto glass, frit fuses to the glass and makes it opaque. The glass is then installed on the outside of office buildings, for instance, to cover up electric lines and tubing between floors, said Richard Foxx, O’Hommel’s lawyer.

Duraspan operated a plant on Carmelina Avenue until 1985.

In 1983, it was cited by city, county and state authorities for excess lead emissions and ordered to pay for a cleanup of the neighborhood.

It was then, when Marcos was 4, that his parents first became aware of the emissions and suspected that they might be to blame for their son’s birth defects.

“We put two and two together. . . . There was no other reason for it happening to me,” Rosalie Franco, 35, said Thursday.

Duraspan later changed its spraying processes to contain the emissions, Gordon said.

Franco said that she, her husband, Salvador, and son, Anthony, moved into a house on Wellesley Avenue, one block from Duraspan, in 1977. After the move, she had two miscarriages before giving birth to Marcos. All the while, she said, she was eating tomatoes, zucchini and other vegetables from her back yard but did not suspect anything was wrong.

“I didn’t notice anything. We just lived our everyday life,” she said. “We didn’t expect anything like that to happen.”

Healthy Children

After Marcos’ birth, she was busy caring for the boy and “I just let (the garden) go,” Franco said. She later gave birth to two healthy children.

Duraspan settled the case before trial, Gordon said, agreeing to pay Marcos $2,000 a month, starting when he turns 18.

Gordon said he is not aware of any other cases in which a jury has found that “major congenital malformations” resulted from a mother’s ingesting lead. Lawsuits are pending in Massachusetts and New York against lead paint makers, charging that they have failed to use safe substitutes or post warnings.

Foxx said that he will file motions to overturn the verdict.

“There was no evidence that indicates lead is in any way implicated” in Marcos’ deformities, he said.

Defense experts contended that Marcos suffers from a rare cluster of congenital defects known by the acronym CHARGE, whose cause is unknown. Foxx said O’Hommel has never before been sued over lead in its products.

Franco said the verdict shows that “the companies have to care about what they’re working with . . . about their use . . . and what it can cause and what it can do.”

“I’m very happy for my son’s future,” she said. “The system works. Maybe it’ll make things better for everyone.”