Excerpts from deposition of Ms. Mount

I work at the County building as a file clerk, well I'm part-time now. I do not consider myself a full-time landlady, it's just something I do on the side. I started out with just one house and now I rent half a dozen.

I bought the property at 857 Forest Avenue in 1987 and have rented it to a series of families. I own 6 homes in the Leeper Park area which I rent to families, single working people, or students. I charged the Cerritos about $450 a month, which I consider a fair rent for that neighborhood and that house. There are at least two other families with small children who have lived in that location for periods of at least a year since I began renting it. It is a 3-bedroom house with a nice fenced yard, good for a family with small kids. I have never had any complaints about lead poisoning from previous renters. I have never had any complaints about lead poisoning from my other tenants in the Leeper park area.

No, to my knowledge 857 Forest was not tested for lead until after this suit was filed. I never have had any of my properties tested for lead. In 1992, after Title X, I called up one of the companies that do this testing and told them I had six houses built in the 1890's. They just laughed. They told me that there would almost certainly be lead in the paint and that getting the lab test done to confirm that would run me $125 per home. That would cost me over $1000!

I called the Indiana Dept. of Environmental Management (IDEM) and they told me that the law did not require me to get the tests done. I just had to warn renters about the possibility of the lead in the paint. IDEM told me that if the tenants want to test the house, or if I decide to sell the house and some buyers want to test it, I couldn't stop them from doing it, but I wouldn't have to pay for it. But I have no obligation to test it myself. I got the official EPA brochure and from that point on I always gave the renter a copy of the brochure and had the renter sign a "lead warning waiver" before we signed the lease. That's what I did with the Cerritos.

I have heard of children who did drink paint or eat paint flakes, but it seems to me that it's the parent's responsibility to keep their child from drinking paint or putting inappropriate objects in their mouths, not mine.

When I rented the home to the Cerritos, it was in good repair--new paint downstairs, a nice new bannister on the stairs to keep the baby from falling off the stairs, the carpeting was only 3 years old. I had a cleaning company in before they moved in, of course. In 1998 I had eight new windows put in downstairs to replace drafty ones--that cost a pretty piece of change. It was done by a contracter from Mishewaka, he was great--he even cleaned up after himself, which believe me they don't always do. The exterior was last painted in 1990. The house is very sound considering its age.

Do I think lead in paint is dangerous? Well, I grew up in a house in that neighborhood that was built in 1894, and neither me or my friends ever heard of anyone being poisoned by paint unless they drank it. Today, you get people who think their house is out to kill them, they want to test for asbestos, they want to test the water, they want all sorts of inspections, they want to know if the particle board in the kitchen counters was glued with formaldedyde glue. Now it's lead. Return to facts in the case