Maria Gomes listens to Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch speak at a news conference in front of her home on Fern Street in Providence. Lead paint in her house was being remediated.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

PROVIDENCE — The law firm of Decof and Decof has settled its dispute over the payment of fees to firms that helped the state sue the nation’s paint companies for toxic lead paints that were widely used in Rhode Island several generations ago.

Leonard Decof, who played a key role in the first of two trials against the paint companies, confirmed the settlement on Monday but declined substantive comment.

Superior Court documents show that Judge Michael A. Silverstein in February approved the disbursal of a total of $1,083,454 to Decof and Decof and Edwards Angell, Palmer & Dodge. The documents do not indicate how the payment was divided.

The money comes from a multimillion-dollar settlement the state reached with one defendant, Dupont Corp., in return for dropping its lawsuit against the company in 2005.

On Monday, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch held a news conference in front of a single-family house, owned by Maria Gomes, in Providence to show how about $6.7 million of the Dupont settlement is being spent to eradicate lead-paint problems in 600 houses.

Crews for CLEARCorps USA, a national contractor, are cleaning up about five houses at a time and plan to work for a further 30 months, according to Derek Winslow, the local program director. He said Gomes’ house, where she cares for four children, registered “red-hot” for lead on much of its woodwork. His crew plans to wet-sand the woodwork and paint over it.

More work is targeted for neighborhoods in Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket and Woonsocket. Homeowners who want to learn more should call the Childhood Lead Action Project in Providence at (401) 785-1310 or the Blackstone Valley Community Action Program at (401) 723-4520.

Lynch said Rhode Island is the only state to obtain money from a paint company that produced products that continue to poison thousands of children who ingest them as they wear off walls and woodwork.

But he faced questions from a television reporter about another part of the settlement, $2.5 million that was paid to The Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Giovanni Cicione recently questioned that payment in a commentary in The Providence Journal, arguing the payment was simply covering part of a pledge that lawyer Jack McConnell made to the hospital, and was designed to compensate him in some way for his work representing the state in the lead case.

When Lynch announced the settlement in 2005, he repeatedly insisted it was not to be called a settlement, and that none of it was going to the government or to compensate lawyers.

But in 2006, J. William Harsch, a Republican who was running for Lynch’s seat, questioned why he had earmarked $2.5 million to go to an out-of-state hospital. Lynch and McConnell both acknowledged then to The Journal that the money was intended to fulfill part of McConnell’s pledge to the hospital. Lynch said he knew then that McConnell’s law firm, Motley Rice, had a commitment supporting the hospital, but he didn’t understand it to be their personal money.

On Monday, Lynch was more explicit. He said Motley Rice was owed a 16 percent contingency fee for its work, which would total about $2 million, but Dupont refused to pay. He was concerned that the law firm would then bill the state, he said. Having Dupont pay part of Motley Rice’s pledge to the hospital was a way to solve everyone’s problems, he said.

Whitehouse initiated the state’s case against the paint companies in 1999, when he was the attorney general. Lynch later won a jury verdict against several of the companies, but the state Supreme Court threw that ruling out last summer. McConnell’s law firm represented the state during two trials.

This spring Whitehouse and Sen. Jack Reed nominated McConnell for a federal judgeship. Asked if they had any regrets about the Dupont settlement helping McConnell, Lynch answered for himself and Whitehouse Monday.

“None,” Lynch said. He said he thought it was wrong for Dupont to not compensate lawyers, and there never would have been a settlement if the lawyers hadn’t done their work.

Back when the settlement was struck, Decof and Decof filed a lien against the settlement and argued in legal papers that the $2.5 million was distributed to the hospital to “satisfy one or more obligations or pledges of financial support that were made to [the hospital] by said counsel for the state.”

In legal papers filed by Dupont, Decof was quoted as saying his claim was worth about $1 million. Following that, the court released just $1.5 million to the hospital, $1 million to Brown University and $6.5 million to a Washington-based group picked to administer spending on education and remediation.

The final million dollars, along with $83,454 in interest, was released to Decof and lawyers for the hospital. But neither Decof nor representatives for the hospital nor Motley Rice would say how much of that Decof finally got.

plord@projo.com