Firefighters, Hepatitis C, and the Florida Supreme Court
Very few workers' compensation cases make it all the way to the Florida Supreme Court, but this one has. It’s a complicated tale.
Mr. Flamily, the claimant here, was a firefighter for the City of Orlando who contracted Hepatitis C. (By way of background, since 1995, firefighters and other “first responders” have benefited from a special statute which says that, when a firefighter contracts that disease, it’s presumed that he contracted it as a result of his employment). Mr. Flamily actually retired in 1996 due to disability resulting from heart problems. He settled his workers’ compensation claim arising out of those heart problems later that year for a lump-sum payment of $110,750.00. (There’s another special statute that makes heart problems of firefighters and other law enforcement personnel compensable under the Florida Workers’ Compensation Act without having to comply with the “Victor Wine” rule).
Anyway, although Flamily’s Hepatitis C wasn’t diagnosed until 2000, he was convinced that he had contracted it during his employment with the City (Understandable, really, given the nature of firefighters’ work and the long incubation period usually necessary before symptoms of the disease appear). Trouble was, by the time he was diagnosed, he was no longer an employee of the City. And then there was that pesky 1996 settlement agreement where he had settled all potential work-related claims against the City.
The JCC rejected Flamily’s claim for treatment of the Hepatitis C, ruling that he couldn’t rely on the statutory presumption because it only applies only to current employees. And without the benefit of that presumption, Flamily couldn’t prove that his disease was covered as an “occupational disease,” primarily because - no surprise here - he couldn’t prove that anyone with whom he’d come into contact during his employment years (which, of course, had ended four years earlier) actually had the disease.
The JCC did rule, however, that Flamily wasn’t bound by the 1996 settlement agreement. Why? Because at the time it was entered into, the law required a JCC to review any such agreement and to make sure that it was in the claimant’s best interests. And in order to make that determination, the law required JCC to be in possession of all material facts bearing upon that decision. The JCC here determined that the original JCC who had approved the settlement agreement in 1996 didn’t have possession of all of the material facts when he approved the agreement - facts like abnormal liver studies from Flamily’s annual physicals which allegedly were in the City’s possession and which were suggestive of a diagnosis of Hepatitis C at the time the settlement was approved. He therefore vacated the agreement and ordered that the City pay Flamily permanent total disability benefits because of his heart problems. The payments were made retroactive to 1996, with the City receiving credit for the lump-sum they had paid. Both parties appealed this ruling.
The First District sided with the City on both issues. First, the Court concluded that Flamily’s claim for treatment of the Hepatitis C must fail because he couldn’t prove that this condition met the requirements for an “occupational disease.” And although they mentioned it, they didn’t really discuss the statutory presumption of compensability for this disease. The Court also said that, whatever the law might have been in 1996 when the JCC originally approved the settlement agreement, the legislature stripped the authority to vacate settlement agreements from the judges of compensation claims in 2001, so that the JCC hearing the case in 2004 had no authority to vacate the parties’ 1996 settlement agreement.
Flamily appealed the First District’s decision to the Florida Supreme Court, and oral argument was held on June 6. Tragically, Mr. Flamily didn’t get to attend. He died on May 22 at age 58. You can read the First District’s decision here, and the parties’ briefs filed in the Supreme Court here. There’s also news coverage of the case here from the Orlando Sentinel. And, if you have the time, you can read the JCC’s 105-page order here.
