Not Tobacco, Motley Rice's Strategic Error - RI Lead Paint

Plaintiff law firm Motley Rice may have made the classic mistake which leads successful brandname companies and leaders to fail.  Flush with success - both in brandname recognition and in revenues - from its state-based tobacco litigation, Motley Rice decided it could apply the same strategy to lead pigments.  Not a smart move.

Both through original research and experience, management experts such as Dartmouth Business professor Sydney Finkelstein have demonstrated how force-fitting formulas from one situation to another brings down companies and leaders faster than any Enron-type scandal.  In his book "Why Smart Executives Fail," Finkelstein chronicles what could and does go wrong when past success is the template for dealing with current situations.  Think Johnson & Johnson.  Think former Webvan head honcho Shaheen.

And unfolding before us, think Microsoft (Blogger-in-Chief Robert Scoble just left).  Think Delphi's turnaround expert Robert "Steve" Miller (who hasn't been quoted in the media for too long).   And, yeah, think Motley Rice (which could eventually find its tobacco war chest depleted).

Lead pigment is not tobacco.  The situations are not analogous.  Not legally, not medically, not in public opinion. 

Readers of this blog have down cold the facts. 

Unlike tobacco, lead pigments haven't been manufactured, promoted and sold, at least not since 1978.  Typically, to win a lawsuit, James R. Copland points out on Pointoflaw.com (a reprint of his Spring 2006 CITY JOURNAL piece), there has to be an injured party.  There is no injured party in lead pigments.  That's why the public nuisance novel legal theory had to be cooked up.

Medically, again unlike tobacco, lead pigments is a public success story.  At Rhode Island (RI) lead paint trial II, plaintiff witness Patricia Nolan admitted that.  According to the Centers for Disease Control's standards for acceptable levels of lead in the blood of children, now about 98 percent of our children are at or below that level.  In the late 1970s, almost 78 percent failed to meet that level.

And in the court of public opinion, few are really worked up about the lead pigment situation.  There are so many other public-health priorities.  Think childhood hunger.  Think STDs and their impact on fertility.  Think the threat of a bird-flu epidemic.

As a management communications consultant I wince when I observe any organization or leader in a downward spiral.  I am wincing about Motley Rice and its leadership.  Advice? Immediate course correction.  And that's to stop pursuing the former lead pigment companies, pronto.