The Florida Division of Workers' Compensation has announced that the maximum compensation rate for accidents occurring in 2009 is $765.00 per week. This represents an increase of 2.55% over last year's maximum comp rate.
In Hill v. Greyhound Lines, Inc., decided on 8/29/2008, the claimant had violated §440.25(3), which provides that "[e]ach party to a mediation conference has a privilege during and after the conference to refuse to disclose and to prevent another from disclosing communications made during the conference whether or not the contested issues are successfully resolved." Specifically, the claimant had revealed to his treating physician information which he obtained from the employer/carrier during a mediation conference, and as a result the JCC dismissed with prejudice his pending petition for benefits. The court held that absent a finding that the claimant willfully or deliberately violated the mediation confidentiality requirements and absent evidence that the employer/carrier was prejudiced by the disclosure, dismissal with prejudice was too harsh a remedy.
The list of applicants to replace Justices Kenneth Bell and Raoul Cantero on the Florida Supreme Court has been narrowed to eight. You can read their names here:
According to this report from the 8/15/2008 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, however, Governor Crist is upset that the list does not include the names of any women or African-Americans. "I've got several concerns about it, so I'm looking at what my options are," Crist is quoted as saying.
The bar patron who was convicted of battery and other offenses in connection with a brawl at the Stuart Ale House and whose conviction was affirmed by the Fourth District Court of Appeal will get another chance before that court.
As I discussed here, during the course of Deren's criminal prosecution the State came into possession of a letter from Hartford, Stuart Ale House's workers' compensation insurer, documenting that it had paid over $20,000 to and on behalf of its bouncer who was injured in the fracas. Deren contended that the State's failure to disclose this letter to him violated the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brady v. Maryland because he could have used it to question the bouncer's bias and motive to testify against him.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected Deren's argument and affirmed the conviction, but the Supreme Court of Florida has now quashed that decision, holding that the Fourth District improperly applied Brady. The Fourth DCA will now reconsider the Brady claims using the proper standard. Deren v. State, Case No. SC07-1700.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor is investigating that question. And in a majority staff report entitled Hidden Tragedy: Underreporting of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses, the committee answered the question in the affirmative. Why are they being underreported? Because, according to the report:
What incentives do employers have to underreport?
What methods do employers use to discourage reporting?
These hearings were apparently prompted by The Charlotte Observer's six-part series entitled "The Cruelest Cuts," an indictment of North Carolina's poultry industry. The PBS program Expose also covered the story in a report entitled "20,000 Cuts a Day."
The holy grail for workers' compensation carriers is a test that can separate the malingerers from those that are truly injured. Now there are two controversial tests that purport to be able to do just that.
One is the MMPI "fake bad" scale developed by Dr. Paul Lees-Haley. You can read more about it here and here.
The other test is the "functional MRI" scan, marketed by one company under the name "NoLieMRI." Read more about that test here.
Justice Cantero recently announced that he is resigning from the Supreme Court of Florida effective September 6. Then last week, Justice Bell also announced his resignation effective October 1.
Now comes word from this article from the 5/24/2008 edition of the Miami Herald that Justices Anstead and Wells will be forced to leave office early next year due to reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70. So within the next few months Governor Crist will have the opportunity to appoint four of the seven justices on the court. Justices Cantero, Bell, and Wells are generally considered to be the three most conservative justices currently serving.
This isn't strictly a workers' compensation issue, but is one that has businesses around the state concerned about potential liability, both in workers' compensation and in tort. Ch. 2008-7, Laws of Fla., officially entitled the "Preservation and Protection of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Motor Vehicles Act of 2008," but perhaps more popularly known as the "Guns at Work" bill, was passed by both houses of the Florida Legislature and signed by the governor. Scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2008, the bill prohibits employers in the state from interfering with the right of "any customer, employee, or invitee" to bring a firearm to the workplace so long as it is "lawfully possessed and locked inside or locked to a private motor vehicle in a parking lot and when the customer, employee, or invitee is lawfully in such area." The bill also authorizes a civil action, including an award of attorney's fees, against an employer who violates the law.
But does one man's right to keep and bear arms infringe upon another man's right to use his property as he wishes? The Florida Chamber of Commerce says so and has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional. They contend that the bill violates the Takings and Substantive Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment and, because the bill allegedly conflicts with an OSHA provision, the Supremacy Clause of Article VI.
On May 22, the Chamber filed this Motion for Preliminary Injunction to keep the law from going into effect on July 1. Stay tuned.
After pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud a health beneficiary program under 18 U.S.C. §§371 and 1347, two Jacksonville health care providers lost their licenses to practice chiropractic recently. Doll v. Dept. of Health; Schoenborn v. Dept. of Health.
According to the facts found by the administrative law judge, Dr. Doll: (1) caused or allowed claims to be filed with Medicare and other health care benefit programs for diagnostic ultrasound and nerve conduction velocity studies even though he did not contribute his professional expertise to the performance of the tests; and (2) caused or allowed claims to be filed with Medicare and other health care benefit programs for the professional component of MRI tests even though the MRIs were actually read and interpreted by qualified radiologists who were paid by Dr. Doll's company.
The legal issue involved in Dr. Doll's case was whether his 2003 guilty plea in federal court was sufficient justification to revoke his license under §456.072(1)(c), Fla. Stat. (2003), which provides for disciplining a licensee who is "convicted or found guilty of, or entering a plea of guilty or nolo contendere to. . . a crime. . . which relates to the practice of. . . a licensee's profession." The First DCA rejected Dr. Doll's argument that the crime to which he plead guilty did not "relate to" the practice of his profession.
In these four consolidated cases, the First District Court of Appeal said that the JCC should have granted the claimants' motions to disqualify him from adjudicating their claims. The motions alleged that the judge should have disqualified himself because of prejudicial remarks which he allegedly made about the claimants' attorney and others who testified against his re-appointment as a judge. Under Fla. R. Jud. Admin. 2.330(f), a judge ruling on a motion to disqualify "shall determine only the legal sufficiency of the motion and shall not pass on the truth of the facts alleged."
You can read the motions to disqualify, along with the JCC's orders denying them, here, here, here, and here.
Louis F. Tidwell, a former judge of compensation claims, is in trouble with the law again. Judge Tidwell was removed from the bench and disbarred following his 1991 conviction for having sex with a 14-year-old girl and smoking crack cocaine.
Now he's been arrested and charged with practicing law without a license. Here's the story from the 10/12/2007 edition of the St. Pete Times.
David A. McCranie has been licensed to practice law in the State of Florida since 1982. He forrmerly served asMore...
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