Thomas

On July 22, 1987, respondent Emory Thomas was employed as an "aircraft repairer" at the Alameda Naval Air Station. While disassembling a jet engine in the course of his employment duties, respondent used a Garland No. 4 split-head hammer (hereafter the hammer), which he obtained from the "special tool rack," to remove a disk from the turbine shaft of the jet engine. As he swung the hammer at the disk, the metal head disengaged from the handle, causing his left hand to contact the turbine blades. He sustained a severe injury to his left index finger.

Immediately after respondent's accident, fellow employee Gary Niehaus retrieved the broken hammer which was in four parts, and turned it over to his supervisor, Robert Todd, the following morning. Todd placed the hammer in a locked drawer of a file cabinet in his office, along with "past history data records." Thereafter, the file cabinet drawer remained locked, with Todd in possession of the keys, and was opened only infrequently and briefly for retrieval and examination of records. In October or November of 1988, the lock on the file cabinet was broken; the cabinet then became accessible even without keys. On…