03 Aug 2021

Florida: Court Reverses $15,000 “Fine” Against Employer’s Carrier

Finding that a Florida circuit court had jurisdiction, pursuant to § 440,23(1), Fla. Stat., to award sanctions to an injured worker who contended the employer’s carrier who failed to provide orthopedic care following the entry of an order by a JCC requiring the carrier to authorize and provide such treatment, the appellate court found nevertheless that the circuit court’s entry of a $15,000 fine against the carrier could not stand since there was no evidence before the circuit court as to the value of the worker’s lost benefit. The court stressed that the $15,000 sanction was a flat, unconditional fine with no opportunity to purge prior to its imposition. Thus, the circuit court’s imposition of the fine could not be upheld as a compensatory or coercive civil contempt sanction. The case was remanded with instructions that the circuit court reconsider the evidence and make an appropriate sanctions award.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Zurich Am. Ins. Co. v. Samson, 2021 Fla. App. LEXIS 7656 (2d DCA, May 28, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 135.01[1], Digest, note 1.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see