WRULD Claims heard in Courts in England, Scotland and Wales

Hearing(s) - Lee - v - Vauxhall Motors Ltd

Date	Court	Claimant(s)	Task	Injury	Judgment for
6 Sep 1994	Luton County	Lee	Use of an air operated sander	Trigger Finger	Plaintiff

The Plaintiff was born on the 22nd May 1950. She is comparatively slight in build and short, being described in 1989 as 7¹/₂ stone in weight and 4' 11" tall. She started to work at Vauxhall's Assembly Plant in Luton in August 1983. During the period 1983-1986 Mrs Lee suffered from a number of physical problems unrelated to work and indeed her general health worsened after the end of 1986. In 1987 she had a total of 62 days off sick, in 1989 99 days and in 1991 156 days. However, by the beginning of December 1986 Mrs Lee had suffered no work-related physical problems. She had worked in the Company's '15 Division' for three years performing tasks not requiring particular strength or force.

She was aware of the procedures involved in complaining of illness. She described herself as a person who would seek treatment when she needed it. At that time the Defendant operated a fully staffed Medical Centre with a full-time Doctor and Sister helped by two Nurses when the production line was running. In addition there was a separate Physiotherapy Department. Despite her earlier problems the Defendant acknowledged that Mrs Lee was a good employee who worked competently at the jobs allocated to her. In her turn the Plaintiff acknowledged the competence of the medical staff, was grateful for the sympathetic way in which she had hitherto been treated and throughout regarded the Defendant in general as good employers.

In December 1986 she moved to the '14 Division'. Her job involved the use of a cone sander. This is a cylindrical air operated sanding tool weighing 1.35 kg. Mrs Lee's task was to grind down welding imperfections in the rear corners of car body shells as they moved along the production line. To do this she held the sander about chest height guiding the head with her left hand and gripping the larger diameter upper part of the machine with her right hand depressing the operating lever as she did so. Eight hour day shifts were worked with two ten minute tea breaks and a break of one hour for lunch. The production rate was then in the range 28-35 cars per hour.

The cone sander was a standard production tool that was in use in one form or another throughout the engineering industries and had been since at least 1965. In 1986, Vauxhalls alone had between 50-60 such machines used so far as the evidence went without previous complaint.

On the 30th January 1987 Mrs Lee complained to her GP that for two months she had been getting numbness and pins and needles in the right hand and aching in the right arm. She confirmed this on the 16th February 1987, first to her own Doctor and to the Company Doctor. On the 3rd March the complaints persisted but in addition Mrs Lee was concerned because she was unable to extend her right ring and little finger after flexing. On the 10th March an Orthopaedic Registrar described her as having "triggering of her right little and ring fingers of a fairly severe degree". Following this discovery Mrs Lee stopped work on the line. By this time she said her fingers were clenched tight over 24 hours a day. On the 16th April 1987 Mrs Lee had the operation to relieve the symptoms of trigger finger.

After leaving the production line in March Mrs Lee went to the Rehabilitation Centre (Rehab). After her operation she noticed immediate improvement but remained in Rehab until the 1st June. Problems arose almost at once on return to the line after that. By the 8th June Mrs Lee was being given intensive physiotherapy. By the 1st July she was a good deal better and did not in fact return to using the sander. From that time until the Autumn of 1991, Mrs Lee suffered considerable ill health and spent much time off. Whilst at work she was occasionally asked to use the sanding machine for the odd day or so, which caused discomfort but the effects did not last.

In October 1991, she was required to use a 'Dynafile' machine. This was an air driven tool with a short revolving belt of abrasive material held and switched on by a pistol grip and used to file down any residual weld splatter. It was a light job, partly because it was only necessary to use the file between 50% and 80% of the time, and because weld splatter is not the same as solid imperfections in the welded joints themselves. Mrs Lee had a problem the very first day she used the file, there was numbness in the hand and wrist which swelled up. She also said that the same two fingers as before curled up again, although not so badly. After using the file, in all for about a week, Mrs Lee was taken off that work.

Having reviewed all the evidence, Mr Recorder Akast concluded that the Plaintiff's condition was caused, or materially contributed to, by the work she was required to do and went on to consider foreseeability.

Another employee, a Mrs Lock who was ten years younger than Mrs Lee, worked on the line using two power drills, one substantially heavier than the cone sander. In December 1984, two years before Mrs Lee's complaints, Mrs Lock herself complained to her own doctor who referred in his note to trigger finger in the fourth finger on the right hand. By March 1985 an operation was arranged after referral to her local hospital. With Mrs Lock it was the middle and ring fingers of the right hand which triggered although the little finger was slightly affected. Prior to this Mrs Lock had developed aching in the wrist and palm of the right hand followed two weeks later by pins and needles. Mrs Lock had started using the drills in June 1984 and the first symptom developed almost four months later, but by early December that year her doctor had made a tentative diagnosis of trigger finger. The overall pattern of events was not dissimilar to that followed two years later in Mrs Lee's case. The two jobs were similar to the extent that they each demanded physical gripping of a rotating tool and its precise application to steel bodywork for long hours.

In concluding his Judgment, Mr Recorder Akast says:

This is a car assembly plant. Within the imperatives of industrial production I take the view that no individual employee acted harshly and no one was unduly unkind. The Company are to be congratulated in the quality of the medical facilities available at this time, including the excellent Rehabilitation Centre. I do find, however, that the systems were insufficiently flexible and there was wholly inadequate communication between Departments. The Defendants are a major employer and it seems to me that even eight years ago they had a duty to keep abreast of industrial disorders and to review new literature, perhaps annually, with a view to effecting necessary changes. Any complaint taken as far as Mrs Lock went should have been acted upon both by the institution of a warning programme for all employees moving to new areas of relevant work and by plain instructions to workplace supervisory staff to take all related complaints seriously from the outset. I have already remarked upon the broad similarities in symptom development as between the Plaintiff and Mrs Lock. All this should have been picked up.

The importance of warnings has been emphasized in a number of the Judgments to which I was referred. I was I think most assisted by the synthesis of Woolf J in Pepall. The learned Judge (as it happens) was writing in December 1985 and considering facts derived from the late 1970s. I should add that there are cases where the Court in considering appropriate warnings has accepted that in particular circumstances a given Plaintiff would have ignored warnings. I quite accept the point that warnings must be appropriate to the risk one does not want to prevent any employee taking on a particular job. However, for the reasons I have already given I am quite sure that Mrs Lee would have heeded relevant warnings and it seems to me that certainly by the early part of January 1987 she would have stopped work on the line.

In summary:

(a) Given the history of Mrs Lock and the overall development of RSI/WRULD Mrs Lee's condition was caused, or materially contributed to, by the Defendants breaches of statutory duty and negligence and these injuries were in all the circumstances reasonably foreseeable;

(b) Specifically, the statutory duty and duty of care could each have been discharged by removing Mrs Lee from work of this type at or about Christmas 1987. The Plaintiff could then have been fully examined and in the light of the 'Lock' history closely monitored. Upon the first resumption of any relevant symptoms thereafter Mrs Lee should have been removed from this form of work. Had this happened it is likely, in my view, to have prevented the onset of trigger finger;

(c) As to warnings, (this allegation put in by amendment in 1993) for the reasons I have given, the Defendants fail. The introduction of a warning and continuing education programme as envisaged years ago by Mr Justice Woolf could and should have been put into place. It follows therefore that the Plaintiff succeeds on liability.

Mrs Lee was awarded £3,000 general damages and special damages of £560.14, plus interest.

V2.01

Last updated: 16/10/2009