01Types of compensable repetitive stress injuries.
- Carpal tunnel syndrome — median nerve compression at the wrist. Most-common RSI. Common in office workers, healthcare, manufacturing, and trades.
- Cubital tunnel syndrome — ulnar nerve compression at the elbow.
- Lateral and medial epicondylitis — tennis and golfer's elbow, respectively.
- Trigger finger — stenosing tenosynovitis of the finger flexor tendons.
- De Quervain's tenosynovitis — wrist tendinitis affecting thumb extensors.
- Rotator cuff tendinitis and tears from cumulative overhead and overuse work — see shoulder injuries.
- Cervical and lumbar disc degeneration from cumulative lifting and postural work — see back & neck.
- Plantar fasciitis from prolonged standing and walking work.
- Hearing loss from chronic occupational noise exposure.
02The occupational disease framework.
RSI claims are usually filed as "occupational disease" claims rather than as "accident" claims. The legal framework is different in important ways:
- Date of injury — for an occupational disease, the date of injury is the date you became disabled, the date you knew or should have known the condition was work-related, or the date of last exposure — whichever is most favorable, depending on the claim. The carrier will pick the most defense-friendly; you should pick the one that maximizes your case.
- Filing deadline — two years from the date of injury, but the date of injury itself is contestable, so the deadline is contestable too.
- Causation — for occupational disease, the work activity must be a "competent producing cause" of the condition. The medical narrative tying the condition to the specific work activities (volume, force, posture, duration) is decisive.
- AWW — calculated based on the 52 weeks before the date of injury, which is itself disputed. The AWW arguments are different (and often more favorable) than they would be for an accident case.
The "date of injury" argument is worth thousands of dollars.
An RSI date of injury can frequently be argued as "the date you stopped working" rather than "the date the symptoms began." If you stopped working last month and your AWW was higher last month than it was three years ago when symptoms began, the right date-of-injury framing materially raises the AWW used to compute every dollar in the case. Carriers consistently default to the earliest defensible date because it's lowest. Pushing back is standard, and standard wins.
03Filing deadlines for occupational disease.
Two years from the date of disablement, or two years from the date you knew or reasonably should have known the condition was work-related — whichever is later. The "knew or should have known" formulation is more flexible than it sounds. Symptoms that come and go can be reasonably attributed to non-work causes for years before a definitive medical diagnosis ties them to work.
If you're past the apparent deadline, don't assume the case is dead. Get the medical record reviewed, the employment history laid out, and the date-of-disablement question evaluated under the actual statute.
04AWW for cumulative trauma.
AWW for occupational disease is computed off the 52 weeks before the date of injury. Because the date of injury is itself moving, the 52-week window is moving. Workers who have been on reduced earnings for years before formal disablement can sometimes use the higher pre-reduction AWW; others can use the recent AWW even if it's lower for the formal date but with concurrent earnings included. The math gets complicated; the value of doing it correctly is often substantial.