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Sheri SangjiIt isn't just the Medical Center at UCLA that hires lawyers to help it avoid responsibility for unnecessary deaths. The Chemistry Department does it, too.
UCLA chemistry professor ordered to stand trial in fatal lab fire
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
April 26, 2013
UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran has been ordered Friday to stand trial on felony charges stemming from a laboratory fire that killed staff research assistant Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji more than four years ago.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, which is believed to be the first such prosecution involving a U.S. academic lab accident.
Harran is charged with willfully violating state occupational health and safety codes and faces up to 4 1/2 years in prison if convicted.
DOCUMENTS: Report finds fault in death of lab assistant
"We fully expect to vindicate Professor Harran,” his attorney, Thomas O’Brien, said after the hearing. “This was an accident, a tragic accident. We have always maintained that, as the University of California has, and we expect him to be vindicated.”
Sangji, 23, was not wearing a protective lab coat Dec. 29, 2008, when a plastic syringe she was using to transfer t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another came apart, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. She suffered extensive burns and died 18 days later.
Harran, 43, is accused of failing to correct unsafe work conditions in a timely manner, to require clothing appropriate for the work being done and to provide proper chemical safety training.
From the outset, he and UCLA have cast Sangji’s death as an accident and said she was an experienced chemist who was trained in the experiment and chose not to wear a protective lab coat.
Harran’s lawyers sought to bolster those contentions during a preliminary hearing that spanned several days late last year and in a written motion to dismiss the felony charges or have them reduced to misdemeanors.
Among other things, they argued that Harran believed that Sangji, who had graduated just five months earlier from Pomona College in Claremont with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, was adequately trained by a previous employer and by a senior researcher in Harran’s lab.
Prosecutors countered that there is no evidence that Harran or anyone else trained Sangji in the handling of the chemicals that set her clothing ablaze, causing severe burns over nearly half her body.
“The bottom line with regard to the lack of training provided by defendant Harran is that, if victim Sangji had been properly trained ... victim Sangji would be alive today,” they wrote in court papers.
Deadly UCLA lab fire leaves haunting questions
Problems at UCLA went unfixed for two months before a young researcher was burned in a chemical accident.
By Kim Christensen
LA Times
March 1, 2009
UCLA's Molecular Sciences Building was mostly closed for the holidays on Dec. 29 as research assistant Sheri Sangji worked on an organic chemistry experiment.
Only three months into her job in the lab, the 23-year-old Pomona College graduate was using a plastic syringe to extract from a sealed container a small quantity of t-butyl lithium -- a chemical compound that ignites instantly when exposed to air.
As she withdrew the liquid, the syringe came apart in her hands, spewing flaming chemicals, according to a UCLA accident report. A flash fire set her clothing ablaze and spread second- and third-degree burns over 43% of her body.
Eighteen excruciating days later, Sangji died in a hospital burn unit.
"It is horrifying," said her sister Naveen, 26, a Harvard medical student. "Sheri wasn't out doing something stupid. She was working in a lab at one of the largest universities in the world. She gets these horrific injuries and loses her life to these injuries and we still don't know how it happened or why it wasn't prevented."
Sangji's death was more than a tragic workplace accident. It also raised serious questions about the university's attention to laboratory safety.
"It was totally preventable," said Neal Langerman, a San Diego consultant and former head of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety, whose members were given a detailed account of the incident by a University of California safety official.
"Poor training, poor technique, lack of supervision and improper method. This was just not the right way to transfer these things," Langerman said. "She died, didn't she? It speaks for itself."
Two months earlier, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, Molecular Sciences Room 4221, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. Among the findings: Employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats, and flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.
Chemical Safety Officer Michael Wheatley sent the inspection report to the researcher who oversees the lab, professor Patrick Harran, as well as to the head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department and a top UCLA safety official. The report directed that problems be fixed by Dec. 5.
But the required corrective action was not taken, records show, and on Dec. 29 all that stood between Sangji's torso and the fire that engulfed her was a highly flammable, synthetic sweater that fueled the flames.
Under scrutiny
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating, as are the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. A spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA, the lead agency, said she could not comment on the investigation...
Patrick HarranFacing felony charges in lab death of Sheri Sangji, UCLA settles, Harran stretches credulity
By Janet D. Stemwedel
Scientific American
July 31, 2012
There have been recent developments in the criminal case against UCLA and chemistry professor Patrick Harran in connection with the fatal laboratory accident that resulted in the death of Sheri Sangji (which we’ve discussed here and here). The positive development is that UCLA has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. (CORRECTION: UCLA has reached a settlement agreement with the prosecutors, not a plea agreement. Sorry for the confusion.) However, Patrick Harran’s legal strategy has taken a turn that strikes me as ill-advised.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Half of the felony charges stemming from a 2008 lab accident that killed UCLA research assistant Sheri Sangji were dropped Friday when the University of California regents agreed to follow comprehensive safety measures and endow a $500,000 scholarship in her name.
“The regents acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conditions under which the laboratory operated on Dec. 29, 2008,” the agreement read in part, referring to the date that Sangji, 23, suffered fatal burns.
Charges remain against her supervisor, chemistry professor Patrick Harran. His arraignment was postponed to Sept. 5 to allow the judge to consider defense motions, including one challenging the credibility of the state’s chief investigator on the case. …
UCLA and Harran have called her death a tragic accident and said she was a seasoned chemist who chose not to wear a protective lab coat. …
In court papers this week, Harran’s lawyers said prosecutors had matched the fingerprints of Brian Baudendistel, a senior special investigator who handled the case for the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, with the prints of a teenager who pleaded no contest to murder in Northern California in 1985.
The defense contends that the investigator, whose report formed the basis for the charges, is the same Brian A. Baudendistel who took part in a plot to rob a drug dealer of $3,000 worth of methamphetamine, then shot him. Another teenager admitted to pulling the trigger but said it was Baudendistel’s shotgun.
Baudendistel told The Times this week that it is a case of mistaken identity and that he is not the individual involved in the 1985 case.
Cal/OSHA defended the integrity of the investigation in a statement issued Friday by spokesman Dean Fryer.
“The defendants’ most recent attempt to deflect attention from the charges brought against them simply does not relate in any way to the circumstances of Ms. Sangji’s death or the actual evidence collected in Cal/OSHA’s comprehensive investigation,” it read.
Deborah Blum adds:
Should chemist-in-training approach hazardous chemicals with extreme caution? Yes. Should she expect her employer to provide her with the necessary information and equipment to engage in such caution? Most of us would argue yes. Should chemistry professors be held to the standard of employee safety as, say, chemical manufacturers or other industries? The most important “yes” to that question comes from Cal/OSHA senior investigator Brian Baudendistal.
Baudendistal concluded that the laboratory operation was careless enough for long enough to justify felony charges of willful negligence. The Sangji family, angered by those suggestions that Sheri’s experience should have taught her better, pushed for prosecution. Late last year the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office officially brought charges against Harran, UCLA, and the University of California system itself. …
[Harran's] lawyers have responded to the Baudendistal report in part by focusing on Baudendistal himself. They claim to have found evidence that in 1985 he and two friends conspired to set up the murder of a drug dealer. All three boys were convicted and although, since they were juveniles, the records were sealed, attorneys were able to identify the killers through press coverage at the time. Although Baudendistal has insisted that Harran’s defense team tracked down the wrong man, they say they have a fingerprint match to prove it. They say further that a man who covers up his past history is not credible – and therefore neither is is report on the UCLA laboratory.
I am not a lawyer, so I’m not terribly interested in speculating on the arcane legal considerations that might be driving this move by Harran’s legal team. (Chemjobber speculates that it might be a long shot they’re playing amid plea negotiations that are not going well.)
As someone with a professional interest in crime and punishment within scientific communities, and in ethics more broadly, I do, however, think it’s worth examining the logic of Patrick Harran’s legal strategy.
The strategy, as I understand it, is to cast aspersions on the Cal/OSHA report on the basis of the legal history of the senior investigator that prepared it — specifically, his alleged involvement as a teenager in 1985 in a murder plot.
Does a past bad act like this serve as prima facie reason to doubt the accuracy of the report of the investigation of conditions in Harran’s lab? It’s not clear how it could, especially if there were other investigators on the team, not alleged to be involved in such criminal behavior, who endorsed the claims in the report.v Unless, of course, the reason Harran’s legal team thinks we should doubt the accuracy of the report is that the senior investigator who prepared it is a habitual liar. To support the claim that he cannot be trusted, they point to a single alleged lie — denying involvement in the 1985 murder plot.
But this strikes me as a particularly dangerous strategy for Patrick Harran to pursue.
Essentially, the strategy rests on the claim that if a person has lied about some particular issue, we should assume that any claim that person makes, about whatever issue, might also be a lie. I’m not unsympathetic to this claim — trust is something that is earned, not simply assumed in the absence of clear evidence of dishonesty.
However, this same reasoning cannot help Patrick Harran’s credibility, given that he is on record describing Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old with a bachelor’s degree, as an experienced chemist. Many have noted already that claiming Sheri Sangji was a experienced chemist is ridiculous on its face.
Thus, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Patrick Harran lied when he described Sheri Sangji as an experienced chemist. And, if this is the case, following the reasoning advocated by his legal team, we must doubt the credibility of every other claim he has made — including claims about the safety training he did or did not provide to people in his lab, conditions in his lab in 2008 when the fatal accident happened, even whether he recommended that Sangji wear a lab coat.
If Patrick Harran was not lying when he said he believed Sheri Sangji was an experienced chemist, the other possibility is that he is incredibly stupid — certainly too stupid to be in charge of a lab where people work with potentially hazardous chemicals.Some might posit that Harran’s claims about Sangji’s chemical experience were made on the advice of his legal team. That may well be, but I’m unclear on how lying on the advice of counsel is any less a lie. (If it is, this might well mitigate the “lie of omission” of an investigator advised by his lawyers that his juvenile record is sealed.) And if one lie is all it takes to decimate credibility, Harran is surely as vulnerable as Baudendistel.
Finally, a piece of free advice to PIs worrying that they may find themselves facing criminal charges should their students, postdocs, or technicians choose not to wear lab coats or other safety gear: It is perfectly reasonable to establish, and enforce, a lab policy that states that those choosing to opt out of the required safety equipment are also opting out of access to the laboratory.
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