Digital Equipment Corp has become the first computer company to have a repetitive strain injury verdict go against it. A Federal jury in Brooklyn, New York ordered DEC to pay nearly $6m to three women who blamed the company’s keyboards for disabling arm and wrist injuries they suffered. Patricia Geressy, a secretary at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, won nearly $5.4m; Jill Jackson, a legal secretary, was awarded $306,000, and Janet Rotolo, a hospital billing clerk, was awarded $278,000. According to their lawyer, the three women worked on keyboards DEC knew could cause carpal tunnel syndrome and had been cited by the Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration for similar injuries among its own workers in 1989. The company put in a terrific program for its own workers and managed to reduce the incidence of this at DEC eightfold, but they didn’t bother to tell their customers, he said. DEC will seek to have the verdicts set aside on appeal.
