## Facts

- Julian Niles, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. physics student, conducted research in a “special problems” course under a professor’s general supervision.
- Niles had substantial laboratory and academic experience, including a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, a master’s degree in physics, and extensive time working with chemicals and reference materials.
- While cleaning a metal canister used in his experiment, Niles followed a cleaning procedure described by a former Ph.D. student.
- Niles combined acetone and ethanol with nitric acid inside the metal canister, which contained residue of titanium isopropoxide.
- Expert testimony attributed an explosion to the combination of nitric acid with the organic solvents under the conditions present in the metal container with residue.
- The explosion severely injured Niles when metal fragments penetrated his leg and lower abdomen.
- Niles sued the University for negligence, alleging failures to provide laboratory safety training and to warn about the danger of mixing those chemicals in a metal container.
- At the close of Niles’s liability evidence, the trial court granted the University’s motion for directed verdict; Niles appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence, viewed most favorably to Niles, created a jury question that the University breached a duty to provide safety training or warnings to an experienced doctoral student.
2. Whether the evidence supported proximate causation between any alleged failure to train or warn and Niles’s injuries, such that a directed verdict was improper.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed the directed verdict for the University.
- The court held the evidence demanded judgment as a matter of law for the University because Niles’s education and experience placed him in a position to understand or discover the relevant chemical risks.
- The court found no sufficient evidentiary basis that any alleged deficiency in training or warning by the University proximately caused the explosion and injuries.

## Legal Principles

- A directed verdict is proper when there is no material evidentiary conflict and the evidence, with all reasonable deductions, demands a particular verdict under OCGA § 9-11-50(b).
- On review of a directed verdict, the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, considering only the grounds asserted in the motion.
- In negligence claims premised on failure to warn or train, the plaintiff must present evidence of a duty, breach, and proximate causation; conclusory assertions do not create a jury question.
- The scope of any duty to warn may be limited where the plaintiff is a sophisticated user with advanced training and the risk is reasonably knowable through available reference materials and expertise.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed judgment for the University because the record did not support that the University owed or breached a duty to provide additional specific safety training or warnings to a highly experienced doctoral researcher, and it did not show that any alleged omission by the University was the proximate cause of the laboratory explosion.


Niles v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. Sys. of Ga., 222 Ga. App. 59, 473 S.E.2d 173 (1996)