Wednesday Night Post

Injured workers' access to courts will be severely limited if proposed Florida House and Senate bills become law.

Workers' Compensation attorney's fees are in danger of reverting to their pre-Fall 2008 level, severely limiting workers' access to courts when they are injured on the job.

On October 28, 2008, the Florida Supreme court ruled on Emma Murray v. Mariner Health and Ace USA. The short of the case is that Emma Murray's attorney received approximately $8.11 per hour for obtaining her a benefit which was wrongly denied to his client by the insurance carrier. On the other hand, the attorney for the carrier received $125 per hour for unsuccessfully defending the claim. Emma Murray's attorney's took the case to the Florida Supreme Court arguing the statute was unconstitutional.

Rather than make the determination as to whether the statute was unconstitutional, though in my opinion it is, the Florida Supreme Court reinterpreted the statute. This gave the JCC (Judge of Compensation Claims) the power to award a "reasonable attorney's fee" to the injured worker's attorney, if the statutory formula was unfair as illustrated above.

Unfortunately, some of our Florida congressmen, specifically Rep. Anitere Flores (R-Miami) and Sen. Garrett Richter (R-Naples) disagree with the interpretation given by the Florida Supreme Court and now want to rewrite the Statute putting us back to a pre-Emma Murray world.

There are two major problems with this situation. First, if there are no attorney's fees, then the insurance company has no incentive to provide any benefits. It will simply be cheaper for them to deny costly treatment and hope the injured worker gives up. Second, attorney's are less likely to be in the business of representing Workers' Compensation cases, $8.11 per hour makes for a failed business model. This will severely limit access to court for the injured workers.

If this proposed legislation becomes law, it is my belief it will eventually be ruled unconstitutional. However, this could take the better part of a decade to make its way through the court system. In the meantime, should their new bill become law, thousands of injured workers will be mistreated and not have proper representation to address their grievances.

Thank you for reading For The Injured. All questions and comments are welcome. You can contact the author Adam Werner at AWerner@fortheinjured.com.