Opinion ID: 1436756
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Stage I A Period of Doubt About CTS Claims

Text: Petitioner claims that prior to 1991, the Board routinely denied SLI claims for CTS. The issues were recurring. In today's modern workplace, computer monitors and keyboards are as common as the copy or fax machine. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the fastest growing category of workplace personal injury claims is coming from an epidemic of repetitive stress injuries (RSIs). Repeated, long-term trauma to the hands and wrists through the use of a computer keyboard, for example, allegedly cause RSI. Office workers and journalists who seek to tie the frequent and regular use of their computer keyboards to a variety of debilitating hand and wrist disorders, such as tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, are the primary plaintiffs bringing such claims. [Craig T. Liljestrand, Repetitive Stress Injuries And The Computer Keyboard: If There Still Is No Causal Relationship Between Use And Injury, Is It Wise To Warn?, 13 J. Marshall J. of Computer and Info. L. 391, 391 (Spring 1995) (footnotes omitted).] Even in the more employee-oriented context of workers' compensation benefits, jurisdictions at first resisted compensation for repetitive injuries like CTS. See Village v. General Motors, 15 Ohio St. 3d 129, 15 OBR 279, 472 N.E. 2d 1079, 1081 (1984) (finding that prior decisions denying compensability for disabilities developing over period of time because they lacked suddenness, unexpectedness and unforeseeability, frustrated clear purpose of workers' compensation law to compensate workers injured as result of employment). By October 1991, the Board, prompted by unreported decisions of the Appellate Division and its own investigation of CTS claims among State employees, recognized that it needed to adjust its policy regarding the distribution of SLI benefits to include injuries like CTS. Accordingly, the Board began to award SLI benefits for CTS claims. In considering its rules on SLI, the Board declared that the then current rules [1] on SLI benefits d[id] not adequately address claims arising from disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome. 24 N.J.R. 2108 (June 15, 1992). The Board considered two options. Option 1 would have rejected injuries such as CTS unless certain standards of proof were met; Option 2 stated that SLI benefits would be available for repetitive motion disorders such as CTS when the claim is supported by medical documentation clearly establishing that the disorder would not have occurred but for the performance of specific work duties. Id. at 2109.