A Classroom Flame Demonstration, a Fireball, and a $59.17 Million Verdict

In January 2014, a chemistry teacher at Beacon High School, a college-preparatory public school in Manhattan, ran a classroom exercise known as the "rainbow" demonstration. The point was to show how different mineral salts burn in different colors when they are set alight with methanol. Alonzo Yanes, then 16, was sitting near the front of the room. When the first round of flames died down, the teacher added more methanol to relight the salts. The alcohol vapors ignited, and a jet of fire shot across the lab bench and engulfed him.

Yanes suffered third-degree burns across more than 30 percent of his body, including his face, neck, arms, and hands. He spent weeks in a hospital burn unit and went through repeated skin graft operations. The injuries left permanent scarring and disfigurement, and the evidence at trial showed he faced a lifetime of further surgery and treatment.

Gair Gair Conason brought the case in New York County Supreme Court in Manhattan, with Ben B. Rubinowitz serving as lead trial counsel. Over a four-week trial, the firm argued that the fire was not a freak accident but the predictable result of how the demonstration was run. The teacher had added methanol from a bulk container near an open flame, a practice that let the vapors flash back toward the source and throw burning fuel into the room.

The firm also held the New York City Department of Education responsible for what it knew. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board had already warned about the hazards of the methanol "rainbow" demonstration, yet the district had not pulled it from classrooms or given teachers the safety guidance and equipment to run it without exposing students. The plaintiff's team argued that the city had the warning, had the means to act, and did neither.

On July 1, 2019, the jury found the Department of Education and the teacher liable and returned a verdict of $59,170,000. The panel split the award evenly: about $29.6 million for the pain Yanes had already endured, and about $29.6 million for the decades of pain still ahead, calculated against a 54-year life expectancy.

After the verdict, the city told reporters that the rainbow demonstration was no longer used in any of its classrooms.