Popular Lubbock Paint Store Closes Due to Asbestos Concerns

After 78 years of business, a Kelly Moore Paints has closed all 157 of their stores across Texas, California, Nevada, and Oklahoma, as well as their manufacturing facility located in Hurst, Texas, and have laid off 700 employees.

After Pleuger Chemicals bought the brand in 2022, they were met with a slew of legal debts due to years of court battles regarding the company’s use of asbestos in some of their products. The cost of these battles cost the company $600 million in settlements and were estimated to cost them an additional $170 million in future asbestos liabilities.

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These costs led the company to make the decision to close every location across the U.S. The company plans to fulfill existing customer orders as they can with their existing inventory.

The craziest part of this is that the products that originally contained asbestos, their cement and texture products, were reformulated in 1981 to no longer include the dangerous ingredient. But due to the use of said products in homes that were built before the formula change, there are still plenty of people looking for compensation.

Lubbock was home to one of the company’s stores and was a popular distributor for many developers in Lubbock. For example, Betenbough Homes used Kelly Moore paint in their homes, providing those that purchased a home from them with coupons to get a free gallon of Kelly Moore paint.

Fortunately, the asbestos concerns are not a problem for any Betenbough homeowners, but if you didn’t use that coupon to get your free gallon of paint, you are out of luck.