WRULD DB-Defendant: Shell UK Ltd

Case	Date	Court	Claimant	Task	Injury	Judgment for
Gould - v - Shell UK Ltd	22 Sep 1999	Chelmsford County	Gould	Computer mouse use	Pain	Claimant

This is the first known Judgment in a claim associated with the use of a mouse. This case started at trial on the basis that the Claimant was performing her secretarial duties in a perfectly normal manner, but was doing so for too long, under too much pressure, with too little in the way of breaks and adopting a posture which was unsuitable, which allegedly caused her to suffer RSI in August 1992. However, during the course of her evidence the Claimant demonstrated, for the first time, how she was sitting at her desk and operating the keyboard and, in passing, how she used the mouse with her hand on the mouse but her wrist, forearm and upper arm wholly unsupported. In his Judgment, HH Judge Brandt referred to this as "a quite bizarre use of the mouse" and "a potential source of her pain and suffering", which "recast the entire case". However, the Judge also noted that the Claimant said in her evidence that she found this posture "comfortable".

The Defendant's evidence was to the effect that the Claimant was never seen to have used the mouse in the way she demonstrated in Court and that "if it had been going on" her supervisor "would have done something about it". HH Judge Brandt accepted the Claimant's evidence about how she used a mouse, even though he rejected completely the Claimant's attempt "to paint" the Defendant as "an uncaring slave-driving employer" and thought she was "given to exaggeration" and in several instances "misleading" and overall that he had "hesitation in accepting her as a complete witness of truth".

HH Judge Brandt went on to find that the posture in which the Claimant used the mouse was causative of her pain and suffering and that her employers should have identified that she was misusing the mouse "almost immediately" and that in failing to do so her employers failed to use ordinary common sense and, hence, failed to take reasonable care for her safety. There is no reference in the Judgment to the DSE Regulations.

This Judgment was reported on the 25th September 1999 in The Times under the headline £25,000 damages over RSI failure, in The Daily Telegraph under the headline Designer with RSI is awarded £25,000 and in the Daily Mail under the headline £25,000 for RSI victim caught in a mouse trap.

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Last updated: 27/03/2014