$210KRepetitive stress injury, employer denied claim

Our client spent six years on a produce packing line performing the same grasp-and-rotate motion roughly nine hundred times an hour. She developed bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome and cubital tunnel syndrome on the right.

Her employer denied the claim on the basis that the condition was degenerative and unrelated to her work.

We had an occupational medicine physician perform a job-specific exposure analysis, timing the actual cycle rate on her line rather than relying on the job description in the personnel file.

The measured rate exceeded the published threshold for cumulative trauma by a wide margin. Two co-workers on the same station had filed accepted claims within the preceding three years — a fact the employer had not disclosed and which we obtained through the department’s own records.

The denial was reversed on appeal and the claim resolved for $210K, covering the release surgeries on both wrists and the ulnar nerve transposition.

She has been reassigned to a rotating station with a lower cycle rate. The settlement included the permanent partial disability rating she had originally been denied.