Articles Posted in Workers' Compensation

On April 28, 2016, the Florida Supreme Court announced its decision in Marvin Castellanos v. Next Door Company, et al. The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of Florida Statute 440.34, the law that prescribes the payment of fees to attorneys who represent injured workers. In 2009, Marvin Castellanos, then forty-six years old, suffered…

The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly. It can take years for personal injury and workers’ compensation cases to reach final resolution. In the interim, accident victims often experience extreme financial pressure. The pressure can force victims to compromise their case. An industry has developed to address the problem. Lawsuit funding companies loan money to…

My first workers’ compensation trial involved having to prove that a herniated cervical spine intervertebral disc was work related. Our elderly female client had assembled mattresses in a warehouse for fifteen years. Once the assembly was complete, she was responsible for stacking them one on top of the other until she could reach no higher.…

The day after Jeb Bush suspended his run for the Republican presidential nomination, I read a quote in the Miami Herald from a South Carolina voter expressing dismay because she believed Bush was a good man who cared about disabled people. My immediate thought was, this woman does not know Jeb Bush … or at…

Can a worker injured outside the state of Florida be eligible for Florida workers’ compensation benefits? The answer lies in § 440.09(1)(d), Fla. Stat.: If an accident happens while the employee is employed elsewhere than in this state, which would entitle the employee or his or her dependents to compensation if it had happened in…

An employee injured or killed in the course of his or her employment by the negligence or wrongful act of a third-party tortfeasor may receive workers’ compensation benefits and pursue a remedy by action at law against such third-party tortfeasor. (Where the employee has been killed, the third-party action will be handled through the decedent’s…

Florida’s workers’ compensation system is stacked against injured workers in every way imaginable. It more closely resembles what would be expected in Vladamir Putin’s Russia. An especially egregious arrangement is the one which allows employers and their workers’ compensation insurance carriers to hand-select the injured worker’s treating doctors. See Section 440.13(2) Florida Statutes. Not surprisingly,…

PTD, the acronym for Permanent Total Disability, is the only post-MMI (maximum medical improvement; § 440.02(10) Florida Statutes) workers’ compensation wage loss benefit available to Florida’s injured workers. A Claimant has four ways of qualifying for PTD. The first way is by proving at least one of the injuries listed in § 440.15(1)(b) (2015). Doing…

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) prohibits the employment of illegal aliens in the United States. See Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137, 147, 122 S.Ct. 1275, 152 L.Ed.2d 271 (2002). To accomplish this goal, the IRCA requires employers to verify the identity and eligibility of all new hires by…

Florida’s workers’ compensation system was created, in 1935, with the goal of providing benefits to injured workers without the delay of havi ng to prove the accident was caused by the employer’s negligence. In exchange for this no-fault system, employers were granted immunity from being liable for negligence. The system, however, did not afford absolute…