Dive Brief:
- A 2008 laboratory fire at the University of California-Los Angeles that killed a staff researcher cost taxpayers $4.5 million in legal fees to defend the school and a chemistry professor.
- Sheharbano Sangji, the woman killed in the fire, was not wearing a protective lab coat, and the legal fees were enough to pay for 86,000 lab coats, the Los Angeles Times reported.
- Since criminal charges were dropped against the University of California in 2012, UCLA has spent $20 million on lab safety.
Dive Insight:
Nearly 60 attorneys and others billed more than 7,700 hours on the case, including one attorney who charged $792,000. The legal team won the professor, Patrick Harran, a deferred prosecution agreement that allowed the charges to be dismissed as long as he teaches chemistry to inner-city students for five summers, performs 800 hours of community service, and pays $10,000 to a burn center. The university paid $500,000 for a scholarship in the name of the fire’s victim. The victim’s sister said that Harran failed to correct safety violations in the lab before the fatal fire, and that UCLA had ignored evidence of problems from earlier lab accidents.