WRULD DB-Plaintiff: Colin Walsh

Case	Task	Injury	Date	Court	Judgment for
Walsh - v - G & A N Scott Limited	DSE use: typesetting	Tenosynovitis	24 Jun 1997	Oldham County	Defendant

The Plaintiff was employed as a compositor by the Defendant who owned and operateed a number of local newspapers. He worked in the composing room with computer terminals, typing in the necessary scripts, in particular the adverts for the classified section. He worked four days per week, some which were heavier than others. He would get the dockets containing the adverts from one end of the room in which he was sitting. Once he had completed those dockets he would go to the other end of the room to obtain the printed copy that he had been responsible for typing in.

There was a dispute as to the amount of time the Plaintiff spent at the keyboard. It was clear that he had an official half hour break during his shift. It was also clear that from time to time he or colleagues would go for drinks and would in turn bring them back for other members of the composing staff to drink at their station. There was some evidence that there were two unofficial breaks. There were, therefore, a substantial number of natural breaks in his work at the keyboard.

In addition, it was agreed that he worked on pasting and cutting. The Plaintiff believed that the pasting work was on average no more than twenty-five percent of his work. However, Mr Recorder Lyon concluded from the evidence he heard that the Plaintiff spent approximately fifty percent of his time on the keyboard and fifty percent of his time on pasting and was satisfied that the Plaintiff's overall typing speed was likely to be in the region of the 3,500 key-strokes per hour.

The Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon called on behalf of the Plaintiff accepted in cross-examination that it was anatomically impossible that the Plaintiff had developed extensor tenosynovitis in the left forearm, as he suggested in his report to the Court (there being no extensor tendon sheaths in the forearm). Having reviewed the medical evidence, Mr Recorder Lyon concluded that whatever pains and discomfort the Plaintiff may have had in his shoulders, in his forearm, and in his wrists, they were not attributable to the work that he had been undertaking on behalf of the Defendant.

Towards the end of his Judgment on the 24th June 1997, Mr Recorder Lyon says:

I am satisfied from the evidence of [the Ergonomics Expert called on behalf of the Defendant] and from his earlier report in 1989 that there was no reasonably foreseeable risk of injury associated with the work being undertaken by this plaintiff in the manner which I have described earlier in my judgment. I am satisfied that there was nothing in the work stations that gave rise to a foreseeable risk of injury. In those circumstances I do not believe that the defendants can be said to be in any way, shape, or form at fault in the manner in which they required the plaintiff to work, or in the setting in which they required him to work. I find that they were not negligent.

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Last updated: 16/10/2009