UCLA’s legal fees in fatal lab fire case neared $4.5 million

After UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran walked out of court in June, his lawyers issued a news release hailing the "first-of-its-kind" deal that all but freed him from criminal liability in a 2008 lab fire that killed a staff researcher.

The "deferred prosecution agreement" that allowed Harran to avoid pleading guilty or no-contest to any charge might have been a novel resolution, as his attorneys said.

But it certainly didn't come cheap.

Top-tier law firms hired to defend him and the University of California against felony charges in the death of Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji charged more than 7,700 billable hours and nearly $4.5 million in fees, according to documents obtained by The Times through a California Public Records Act request.

Nearly five dozen defense attorneys, paralegals and others billed for work on the case, the records show. One attorney charged $792,000 in fees and at least four other lawyers billed more than $500,000 each all for pretrial work.

The University of California paid the fees out of its publicly funded pocket. UCLA said in a statement Wednesday that the expense was justified.

"We defended ourselves and our faculty member as was our right and obligation, using funds in a systemwide self-insurance program," it said.

Sangji, 23, was not wearing a protective lab coat in Harran's laboratory on 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.

In late 2011, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office charged Harran with three felony counts of willfully violating state occupational health and safety standards in what was thought to be the first criminal case involving an academic lab accident. Harran, ultimately charged with four felonies, was accused of failing to provide proper safety training and failing to require protective gear for lab workers.

Harran and UCLA contended that Sangji, who earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry five months before going to work in Harran's lab in October 2008, was a seasoned chemist who chose not to wear protective gear and was trained in the experiment she was performing.

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UCLA's legal fees in fatal lab fire case neared $4.5 million