Leeman v. Discovery Channel Store, Inc., et al.

The San Francisco County Superior Court entered a Consent Judgment in Leeman v. Discovery Channel Store, Inc., a subsidiary of Discovery Communications, Inc., et al. on March 26, 2004. The settlement resolved the allegations of citizen enforcer Whitney R. Leeman, Ph.D. that defendant Discovery Channel Store, Inc. sold certain glassware products with colored designs on the exterior with materials that contain lead in the State of California without providing the requisite health hazard warnings.

As part of the settlement, Discovery agreed not to sell any covered products in California unless the products contained the proper Proposition 65 health hazard warning pursuant to Section 1.1 of the settlement agreement. Products that met the following standards did not require warnings: (1) a result of 0.5 micrograms/milliliter of lead or less using ASTM method C 927-99 with respect to any decoration in the lip and rim area (the top 20 millimeters of the product) and a result of 0.1 parts per million (ppm) lead or less using ASTM method 973.32 with respect to any decoration on the interior of the product; (2) a non-detectable test result or a test result no higher than 1.0 micrograms of lead using a wipe test pursuant to NIOSH Method 9100 applied to painted portions of the surface of the product outside of the lip and rim area; or (3) utilize paints on all decorations containing 0.04% lead by weight or less and contain no painted decoration within any part of the interior of the product or in the lip and rim area of the product.

The Consent Judgment required settlement payments of $56,400, divided therein between civil penalties, 75% of which are paid to California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, and compensation to whistleblower Dr. Leeman and her counsel for their successful enforcement of this matter in the public interest.