91 A.D.2d 749 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1982
— Appeal from a judgment in favor of claimant, entered November 24,1981, upon a decision of the Court of Claims (Murray, J.). On November 19, 1974, claimant, then a second-year student at the State University of New York at Albany, was burned on her face and upper chest when ether ignited while she was conducting a chemistry experiment in a university laboratory. The experiment involved separating various chemicals from a mixture by the use of ether as a solvent. After heating the mixture with a Bunsen burner, claimant brought a flask of ether back to her laboratory table from the fume vent hood where it was stored. She poured some of the ether into a funnel and set the flask containing the remainder down on her lab table, about 2(4 feet from a lighted Bunsen burner. Within seconds, fumes from the ether flask caught on fire, burning claimant. She thereafter filed a claim to recover damages against the State, alleging that her injury resulted from the State’s negligence in failing to provide adequate warnings about the flammability and volatility of ether. The Court of Claims concluded that safety warnings were inadequate and that claimant was free from contributory negligence, and awarded claimant $45,000. This appeal ensued. Prior to the accident, claimant had received the following warnings concerning use of ether. At the beginning of a general chemistry course she took in the fall of 1973, over a year before the