Its roots go back to 1998, when Ron Motley, a South Carolina lawyer and veteran of the tobacco settlements, met state attorneys-general and identified lead-based paint as a promising area for public litigation.
Curiously, Rhode Island is also one of the few states where the attorney-general has not endorsed moves by the paint industry to minimise the chance of lead poisoning by publishing warnings and providing training on how to deal with surfaces that may have been coated with lead-based paint.