WRULD DB-Plaintiff: Michelle Cecille Binns

Case	Task	Injury	Date	Court	Judgment for
Binns - v - Speechly Bircham	DSE use: audio typing	Tenosynovitis or Tendonitis	3 Jul 1997	Central London County	Plaintiff

The Plaintiff worked for the Defendants as a legal secretary from the beginning of 1990 until the 14th October 1994. From 1991 onwards she used a word processor with a visual display unit, and it was agreed that she spent some 85% to 90% of her working time at that display unit. She usually worked an eight hour day, with one hour's lunch break. She was free to, and did, take other breaks during the day. For a period of some months during 1992-93 she, on occasions, undertook exceptional uninterrupted stints at the keyboard of two and a half, or more, hours at a time. Otherwise her pattern of work included regular natural breaks, at least from the keyboard itself.

In the middle of 1993 she suffered from some pain in her left wrist and thumb. She is left-handed. In December 1993, she consulted her GP about her symptoms. In May 1994 the GP, at the Plaintiff's request, referred her to a Consultant Rheumatologist, who somewhat unusually subsequently became the Plaintiff's Medical Expert. The Consultant Rheumatologist examined her and observed crepitus in her wrist and diagnosed Tendonitis or Tenosynovitis as alternative diagnoses. The Plaintiff evidently told the Consultant Rheumatologist that she had recently obtained some relief from altering her work pattern so as to increase the frequency of the natural breaks that she took. He, therefore, encouraged her to continue working as she wished to do, but asked her to return for further examination in due course. In fact, she found that she was unable to continue her work, and eventually the Consultant Rheumatologist advised the Defendant of a prognosis which led to her dismissal.

The Plaintiff's Medical Expert argued that intensive typing may cause inflammation of the tendons or tendon sheaths and that as the inflammation healed it could form scar tissue. When intensive movement of the thumb was resumed on typing, the stretching of that tissue caused the pain that disabled the Plaintiff from continuing with her work and her employment. Thus, although the inflammation had healed, the disability continued, at least in the sense that repeating the stimulus caused the problem to recur. This argument, successfully advanced by the Plaintiff's Medical Expert in this case and in others around the same time, became known as the 'adhesions theory'.

It was argued on behalf of the Defendant that the particular thumb movement involved in typing was not obviously directly related to the Plaintiff's particular disability. However, HH Judge Rich accepted the diagnosis and opinion of the Plaintiff's Medical Expert and found that the Plaintiff's typing was the only identifiable, and therefore the most probable, cause of her disability.

The Defendant was found not to have been in breach of regulations 4 and 6 of the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations, but in breach of regulation 7(2) in not providing information to the Plaintiff as to the planning of her daily work routine. The crucial passage of the Judgment states:

The Plaintiff tells me, and I accept, that she did not appreciate the significance and purpose of the taking of breaks, and the making of changes of activity. That she was told of this in the course of her training, that she knew that her training was concerned with health and safety, I do not doubt. ... however, I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that she did not, indeed, understand the context of the training in relation to possible damage to her upper limbs as opposed to the desirability of relieving her posture or resting her eyes.

I do think that if the obligation under Regulation 7(2) had been complied with so that the Plaintiff had been informed that the employee both had a duty to plan her activities so as to ensure interruptions in her workload at the equipment, and had been told that the plan of the employer was that she should use the changes of activities which were inevitable in order to ensure a proper pattern of interruption, her approach to her work would have been different.

HH Judge Rich went on to find that the breach of Regulation 7(2) was sufficiently causative of the injury that the Plaintiff suffered as to render the Defendant liable in damages. HH Judge Rich also found the Defendant negligent in failing to give "any consideration of work practices or any supervision of work practices in relation to the acknowledged need, of which the employers were aware, to ensure the sufficiency of interruption in the attendance in front of the VDU and the operation of the keyboard" and that this, too, rendered the Defendant liable in damages.

The Judgment does not provide any breakdown of damages that were evidently agreed at £35,948, including interest.

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Last updated: 16/10/2009