St. Pete Times Applauds Murray Decision
The 11/9/2008 edition of the St. Pete Times contains this editorial about the supreme court's recent decision in Murray v. Mariner Health. While generally lauding the decision as "a sensible ruling," the editor encourages the legislature to revisit the issue of attorney's fees in the upcoming legislative session. If by then there has been a "bump" in "legitimate claims," concludes the editor, then "it will be clear that the constraints on attorney fees had kept injured workers from getting the benefits they deserved."
Maybe so, but I see two problems with this reasoning. First, I don't know if it would be possible to conduct any type of empirical studies between now and March to determine whether there has been an increase in claims, let alone whether any such increase is attributable to Murray. Second, at least in theory, carrier-paid attorney's fees are never payable unless the claimant's attorney convinces a judge of compensation claims that the employer/carrier has wrongly denied benefits to the injured worker. Therefore, in that sense, all claims resulting in carrier-paid fees are "legitimate."
But critics of Murray would probably argue that the pre-2003 method of assessing carrier-paid attorney's fees sometimes resulted in the payment of fees even in cases involving "illegitimate" claims. In other words, because it's often unclear whether a claim is "legitimate" or "illegitimate," and because the amount of the attorney's fees can far exceed the amount of benefits at issue, carriers sometimes agreed to compromise questionable claims in order to avoid the possibility of being assessed an even larger fee should they be unsuccessful at trial.
