Court offers light at end of (carpal) tunnel for railroad worker.

The Virginia Supreme Court has upheld a jury verdict awarding lost wages to a former railroad worker who suffered carpal tunnel syndrome white working for Norfolk and Western Railway Co. The ruling is believed to be the first carpal tunnel syndrome case under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FEILA) in which an appellate court has upheld a plaintiff's verdict. (45 U.S.C. [subsections]51-60; Johnson v. Norfolk and Western Railway Co., 465 S.E.2d 800 (Va. 1996).

Alfred Reid Johnson began working for Norfolk and Western in 1989 as a grinder and welder. His job was to sand down boxcars in the railroad yard using a hand-held power grinder that turned at 6,000 revolutions per minute. Within a year, Johnson began to experience pain and numbness in his forearms, wrists, and hands. He was diagnosed with a repetitive-motion injury called bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, the result of recurrent vibration from the grinder. Johnson underwent surgery on both wrists and returned to his job. It was not long, however, before the injury began to bother him again, and by 1993 he was unable to work.

Johnson filed suit under FELA in Roanoke Circuit Court alleging the railroad had failed to provide him with a reasonably safe place to work. He sought compensatory damages, including damages for physical injury, pain and suffering, and lost wages. At trial, Johnson's lawyer, Richard Cranwell, presented evidence that Norfolk and Western failed to warn its workers about the dangers of carpal tunnel syndrome even though the railroad had purchased grinders with warning labels on them as early as 1988.

Cranwell, of Vinton, Virginia, said that warning labels appeared only on the guards of the grinders and that the company routinely took the guards off for the kind of close sanding and welding Johnson did.

Cranwell also alleged that by 1989 the railroad industry had already put in place certain measures to eliminate risk factors for carpal tunnel syndrome such as vibration. These measures included engineering controls to reduce the vibration and, as a last resort, giving workers special gloves and handle wraps to absorb vibrations of the grinders. Cranwell alleged Norfolk and Western did not offer the gloves or wraps to workers until after johnson's lawsuit was filed.

In a unanimous decision, the supreme court said the railroad should have foreseen injury to its workers if precautions were not taken to address the problems of grinder vibration. The court noted that accepted standards and methods existed to allow the railroad--in the exercise of ordinary care--to provide a safe work site for grinder users.