DiPirro v. Levitz Furniture Incorporated, et al.

The Alameda County Superior Court entered a Consent Judgment in DiPirro v. Levitz Furniture Incorporated, et al. on August 20, 2003. The settlement resolved the allegations of citizen enforcer Michael DiPirro that defendant Levitz Furniture Corporation sold Tiffany-style lamps containing lead in the State of California without providing the requisite health hazard warnings.

As part of the settlement, Levitz agreed not to offer any covered products for sale in California unless they are reformulated or they bear the Proposition 65 health hazard warning, pursuant section 1.0 of the Consent Judgment. A reformulated product was defined as a product (1) that contains 0.01 percent lead or less by weight in each material used in the product; (2) for which the reasonably foreseeable exposure to lead is indirect and the product yields a result of less than 5 micrograms of lead when using a wipe test pursuant to NIOSH test method 9100; or (3) for which the reasonably foreseeable exposure to lead is direct and the product yields a result of less than 0.5 micrograms of lead when using a wipe test pursuant to NIOSH test method 9100.

DiPirro agreed to waive a portion of the civil penalties payment if Levitz certified that, no later than December 1, 2003, it had contacted the manufacturer of the products and requested that products be manufactured within the reformulation guidelines. The Consent Judgment requires settlement payments of $41,947, divided therein between civil penalties, 75% of which are paid to California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, and compensation to whistleblower DiPirro and his counsel for their successful enforcement of this matter in the public interest.