A man has been awarded nearly $60 million in damages Monday, five years after a fire broke out in his high school chemistry class that left him deeply scarred.
Student Alonzo Yanes attended Beacon High School, a college-preparatory public school in Manhattan.
During a chemistry experiment led by teacher Anna Poole, the teen found himself in the middle of one of the worst classroom accidents in recent memory, the New York Times reported.
But instead of the intended chemical reaction, the class was suddenly engulfed in flames.
A federal agency warned against the dangers of the experiment just weeks before the accident occurred. The same experiment, which attempts to exemplify the color change that takes place when salt is exposed to methanol, has caused two other notable accidents over the last 15 years.
Most students were able to leap behind desks and suffer only mild burns, though Yanes was not so fortunate.
“I was hopelessly burning alive, and I couldn’t put myself out, and the pain was so unbearable,” Yanes said during the three-week trial, according to the New York Post.
Yanes proceeded to spend five months in hospital, including two months in the burn unit receiving extensive skin graft surgeries.
Yanes and his legal team sought $70 million in damages.
“The well-being of students is the top priority of the Department of Education and this chemistry experiment is no longer used in any classroom as a result of this tragic accident,” Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said in a statement. “While we respect the jury’s verdict, we are exploring our legal options to reduce the award to an amount that is consistent with awards that have been upheld by the courts in similar cases.”
The city law office argued that the ruling should not have exceeded $5 million for past damages.
However, the jury granted $29 million in past pain and suffering damages and another $29 million in future rehabilitation costs, covering 54 years into the future.
In his testimony, Yanes noted that he will occasionally take off his glasses so that he does not have to witness the stares of strangers eyeing his disfigurement.
“I will never get used to that,” he said last month.
