So-called repetitive strain injury (RSI) has been the subject of a number of recently decided actions.

Two of the latest were the Norwich county court decision of Judge Mellor on 9 July 1993, when he awarded damages totalling £21,000 to six out of nine plaintiffs who had claimed against the turkey processing firm Bernard Matthews (Mountenay v Bernard Matthews plc) and the London High Court decision of Judge Prosser on 28 October 1993 when Rafiq Mughal failed in his action against his former employers, Reuters, for injuries allegedly sustained during his operation of a visual display unit (VDU) keyboard.Mr Mughal failed because he was unable to establish any breach of duty on the part of his former employers and because the judge was not satisfied that the plaintiff was suffering from any clinically recognised condition caused by his employment.'What has struck me most forcibly in con sidering the plaintiff's evidence,' said Judge Prosser in his summing up, 'is the almost glib use made in the medical documents...about terms such as repetitive strain injury, repetitive strain syndrome, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, otherwise known...as sympathetically main-tained pain.

What are they?'The judge went on to concur with the view of the eminent hand surgeon Mr NJ Barton (expressed in an article exhibited in the case): 'The correct and logical approach is to define the disorder and then consider causation.' He also agreed with the collective view of the British hand surgeons' working party on this much debated subject, which commented: 'No condition should be prescribed as an industrial disease, unless it can be unambiguously defined both clinically and pathologically.'A substantial body of the media publicity given to the Reuters case inferred that Judge Prosser was rejecting the whole concept of any debilitating upper limb disorder caused by repetitive and stressful work.

He was not.

Neither surgeon called on behalf of Reuters Ltd (Mr Campbell Semple and Mr Matthewson) disputed that there are certain conditions which can be caused by repetitive movement usually of an unaccustomed nature.

Tenosynovitis and, more rarely, carpal tunnel syndrome are but two of the clinically diagnosable conditions which can be so caused.Judge Prosser in the Reuters case was finding little differently from Judge Mellor in the Bernard Matthews decision on this crucial aspect of such cases.

Although the latter was hailed by the union supporting the plaintiffs as being a landmark, recognising 'for the first time the possibility of "diffuse RSI" where workers feel pain yet have no visible or tangible injury' (see [1994] Gazette, 13 October, 10), in fact the judge's finding was: 'While I do not rule out the existence of some wider diffuse condition, I do not find it proven to exist.'Judge Mellor awarded damages only to those plaintiffs in respect of whom he was satisfied that they were suffering from a 'clinically diagnosable upper limb disorder'.

He did however award general damages (of £400) to one of the six successful plaintiffs on the basis that: 'The repetitive nature of the work caused this particularly susceptible young lady to feel and suffer from aches and pains well beyond the normal aches and pains caused by fatiguing work.'The TUC has apparently predicted compensation awards from RSI claims totalling £500 million.

This is hardly surprising when just one of the plaintiffs in the Bernard Matthews case originally put forward a claim for past and future losses of over £116,000.

For those aspects of her claim she was awarded £296.65.There are without doubt a minority of physically susceptible employees (both manual and office workers) who will suffer from clinically diagnosable upper limb disorders caused by work.

If their employers are in breach of their duties as employers then such workers should be properly compensated.Civil courts are, however, faced with finely balanced decisions when weighing the interests of such claimants against the possibility of inducing in this country a situation akin to the epidemic of RSI claims which swept through Australian VDU operators and other employees carrying out manually intensive work during the mid-1980s.In Australia the condition was derogatively known as 'Kangaroo paw'.

Perhaps the adoption of the less robust but more succinct title of 'Reuters' cramp' suggested by Mr GJ Jamieson in his letter to The Times on 8 November 1993 would at least settle the debate over what to call this much discussed complaint