Kelly-Moore Paint Co.

With 2,200 employees, 168 retail stores, and several major manufacturing facilities in the Western United States, Kelly-Moore Paint Co. is one of the largest employee-owned paint companies in the United States. They are headquartered in San Carlos, California. The company caters mostly to professional contractors, offering a high-quality product that is known for its durability.

History of Kelly-Moore Paints

Kelly-Moore was founded in 1946 by William E. Moore and William H. Kelly. Moore had been a salesman and lab technician for Glidden Paints before the war. Kelly was a retired Glidden superintendent. From the beginning of their business, the partners decided to concentrate on tract-home paint contractors, a market segment that was largely being overlooked by the national brands at the time. Their paint quickly gained a reputation as a high-end, high-quality product that only required the use of one coat for most jobs.

In 1952, Moore bought out Kelly but kept the double name. Moore maintained tough quality control standards, refusing to reduce the quality of the paints in order to sell more at a lesser price. By the time Moore was ready to retire in 1984, the company boasted sales of $136 million and a profit of more than $11 million, with more than 80 stores located in California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington.

Ten years later, Kelly-Moore acquired the Preservative Paint Company, and shortly thereafter, it instituted an employee stock ownership program. Today, it remains a very successful business, though small in comparison to other giants in the paint industry.

Kelly-Moore Paint Company and Asbestos

For more than a decade, Kelly-Moore used asbestos in its interior finishing products, specifically its Paco Textures products, in which asbestos was used as a thickening agent. The result has been myriad asbestos-related lawsuits - about 48,000 total - filed against the company for injuries caused by exposure. Most of these suits involve an individual who has developed mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that is always fatal. Most of the suits have come from painters and other laborers who worked with the texture products.

In 2002, Kelly-Moore forged a $4.1 billion lawsuit against Union Carbide, alleging that Union Carbide failed to disclose the dangers of the asbestos it sold to the company for use in its products. A verdict in favor of Kelly-Moore would have provided funds to pay asbestos claimants. The case went to trial in 2004 and a Texas jury found in favor of Union Carbide.

Kelly-Moore has not filed bankruptcy nor has it formed an asbestos trust fund, as many companies in the same predicament have done. It continues to litigate cases as they arise.

If you have been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease as a result of working for Kelly-Moore Paint Company or working with any of the company's products and would like more information on treatment options or financial assistance to help pay for medical costs, please fill in the form on this page to receive