Ngo and Australian Postal Corporation

Administrative

Appeals

Tribunal

 

DECISION AND REASONS FOR DECISION [2004] AATA 1033

ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS TRIBUNAL      )

)          No N2003/188

GENERAL ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION		)               N2004/918
Re		MONG CHI NGO

Applicant

And AUSTRALIAN POSTAL CORPORATION

Respondent

DECISION

Tribunal Senior Member M D Allen;
Dr M E C Thorpe, Member

Date1 October 2004

PlaceSydney

Decision (1) The reviewable decision of 19 December 2002 is set aside and this matter remitted to the Respondent with the direction that the Applicant is entitled to compensation for the work- caused injury of carpal tunnel syndrome right wrist.
(2) The reviewable decision of 2 December 2003 relating to permanent impairment is affirmed.
(3) The Respondent is to pay the Applicant's costs.

(Sgd) M D ALLEN

………………………………
  Presiding Member

10.     The Tribunal was shown a film of the Spectrum 10 machine in operation.  Coding is done with the right hand onto a small keypad.  We accept the Applicant’s evidence that the rate of work required was to enter the post codes from between 750 to 850 mail items per 45 minutes.  Duties were rotated but the Applicant would have had up to four periods of 45 minutes each undertaking coding work during her shift.

11.     On 16 August 1999 the Applicant consulted her General Practitioner, a Dr Garber and gave him a history of one month waking at night with tingling and numbness in the tips of her fingers in the right hand.  Dr Garber made a provisional diagnosis of carpel tunnel syndrome and prescribed the use of a wrist splint at night.  In September 1999 the Applicant returned to Dr Garber complaining of ongoing symptoms and he instructed her in the correct strapping of the wrist guard.  Dr Garber’s clinical notes read inter alia “ongoing problem with right carpal tunnel syndrome but using incorrect wrist guard”.

12.     These consultations with Dr Garber are important in the aetiology of the Applicant’s injury.  Although in evidence in chief she stated that it was not until she undertook coding duties that she experienced numbness and tingling in her fingers, the clinical notes of Dr Garber clearly reveal that the Applicant had suffered the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome prior to commencing work at the Sydney West Mail facility and undertaking coding.

13.     That the Applicant’s symptoms of a carpal tunnel syndrome first arose at home is confirmed by the history taken by Dr Chase when the Applicant first consulted him on 23 August 2001, at the request of the Respondent.  Dr Chase refers to an exercise bike and this was disputed by the Applicant.  Just what the Applicant did say to Dr  Chase we do not need to resolve but we are satisfied that Dr Chase correctly obtained a history of symptoms beginning at home.  However the history he obtained was that symptoms were first experienced in 2001.

14.     Dr Chase provisionally diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome and recommended that the Applicant have surgery if that diagnosis was confirmed by nerve conduction studies.

15.     The Applicant’s evidence was that…