diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 839588168ef..f60986b3b36 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -120,6 +120,7 @@ Release 0.90.2 - Unreleased
                (Himanshu Vashishtha via garyh)
    HBASE-3576  MasterAddressTracker is registered to ZooKeeperWatcher twice
    HBASE-3561  OPTS arguments are duplicated
+   HBASE-3572  memstore lab can leave half inited data structs (bad!)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-3542  MultiGet methods in Thrift
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/MemStoreLAB.java b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/MemStoreLAB.java
index f77355e38f1..cbb76e8be09 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/MemStoreLAB.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/MemStoreLAB.java
@@ -154,6 +154,7 @@ public class MemStoreLAB {
     private byte[] data;
 
     private static final int UNINITIALIZED = -1;
+    private static final int OOM = -2;
     /**
      * Offset for the next allocation, or the sentinel value -1
      * which implies that the chunk is still uninitialized.
@@ -182,7 +183,13 @@ public class MemStoreLAB {
      */
     public void init() {
       assert nextFreeOffset.get() == UNINITIALIZED;
-      data = new byte[size];
+      try {
+        data = new byte[size];
+      } catch (OutOfMemoryError e) {
+        boolean failInit = nextFreeOffset.compareAndSet(UNINITIALIZED, OOM);
+        assert failInit; // should be true.
+        throw e;
+      }
       // Mark that it's ready for use
       boolean initted = nextFreeOffset.compareAndSet(
           UNINITIALIZED, 0);
@@ -207,6 +214,10 @@ public class MemStoreLAB {
           Thread.yield();
           continue;
         }
+        if (oldOffset == OOM) {
+          // doh we ran out of ram. return -1 to chuck this away.
+          return -1;
+        }
 
         if (oldOffset + size > data.length) {
           return -1; // alloc doesn't fit