Articles Posted in Workers' Compensation

Florida once treated its injured workers with dignity and respect. This is no longer the case. Current workers’ compensation laws treat injured workers as expendable commodities. Little regard is given to their health and well-being. Rather than being a non-adversarial system for the provision of needed and deserved benefits, as it was originally designed to…

I discuss settlement with our workers’ compensation clients every day of the week. Even people we don’t represent call on a regular basis to pick my brain about settlement. Each case has its own unique set of variables. No blueprint is available to provide answers. Some basic principles do apply in every Florida workers’ compensation…

Because Florida workers’ compensation permanent total disability (PTD) benefits are paid at the rate of 66-2/3% of an injured worker’s average weekly wage (AWW), an employee qualifying for both PTD and Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits may be in line to receive combined payments in excess of his or her AWW. Is this allowed under…

For Florida accident victims and those who care for and about them, the tyrannical reign of Jeb [Bush] the Horrible (Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007) continues to haunt. Once upon a time in Florida, employees hurt at work could sue their employers in tort by proving that an employer’s conduct created a “substantial…

It is customary in Florida for those wishing to settle workers’ compensation cases to be required to execute a voluntary resignation document. Typical resignation language will make it virtually impossible for the former employee to maintain a viable claim for unemployment compensation benefits. To avoid this consequence, language must be added to the effect that…

During the past 12 months we have represented a handful of former Southern Bell linemen injured in the course and scope of their employment. Each was hired by Southern Bell (subsequently Bellsouth, now AT&T) in the 1970s to repair and install telecommunication cable. They started working for Southern Bell in their 20s and stayed until…

Some 80 years ago in Florida, workers’ compensation was substituted for the personal injury system as the nearly exclusive remedy for employees seeking compensation from employers for workplace accidents. The idea was that workers should not have to establish fault, a basic element of every personal injury case, in order to be compensated. In exchange…

Two legislative sessions have passed since State Senator Chris Smith, a Democrat, whose District 29 encompasses parts of Broward and Palm counties, voted with Republicans to eliminate reasonable fees from the state’s workers’ compensation system for claimants’ attorneys. The purpose of the bill was to keep injured workers from being able to fight for their…

Employees injured while working in accidents caused by third parties may be entitled to compensation through Florida’s workers’ compensation system and its personal injury laws. In the context of this blog, a third party is a person or company other than an injured worker’s employer. Examples include manufacturers of defective machinery and negligent operators of…

For the past twenty years I have witnessed the steady and sometimes precipitous decline of rights and benefits available to injured workers under Florida’s workers’ compensation system (Chapter 440 Florida Statutes). The losses have come through legislative, rather than court, action, mostly by the hand of Republican legislators. Not surprisingly, the most damaging losses occurred…