U.S. to Resume Effort for Standards to Ease RSI

Was it a fluke or the beginning of an onslaught?

That question swirls around a New York jury’s unprecedented decision to award almost $6 million in damages to three women who said they were injured by repeatedly using their computer keyboards.

The verdict marks the first time a computer maker--in this case, Digital Equipment Corp.--has been ordered to compensate workers for repetitive stress injuries. And with thousands of people sidelined each year by such injuries, some attorneys and consultants believe the decision could spark a litigation boom on a scale that hasn’t been seen since lawyers learned how to win millions of dollars suing silicon implant manufacturers.

“This has to be regarded as a landmark result,” said Richard Zwetchkenbaum, a personal computer analyst with International Data Corp., a market research firm based in Framingham, Mass. But others argue that it is a mistake to view the case as a harbinger. Computer makers have prevailed in about 15 similar lawsuits, they point out, because there is no scientific evidence proving that keyboards cause carpal tunnel syndrome, the most common repetitive stress injury.

“You can have two people sitting next to each other and one will develop problems and the other doesn’t, and there is tremendous disagreement among researchers about why,” said Sherry Saunders, a spokeswoman for the Center for Office Technology, an association of keyboard manufacturers and users based in Arlington, Va. “Maybe one is surfing the net all night, or playing tennis. There could be a lot of reasons.”

Whether the case is remembered as the first drop in an impending flood, it already is having wide repercussions. Tuesday, Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich reiterated the Clinton administration’s commitment to move ahead with new regulations to prevent repetitive motion injuries.