Florida: Judge Could Not Compel Claimant to Undergo Functional Capacity Evaluation

Stressing that substantive rights under Florida workers’ compensation law are established by the date of the accident and that the 1988 law, which would apply in the instant case, did not contain any provision that could compel a claimant to undergo a functional capacity evaluation (FCE), a Florida appellate court held that an order by a Judge of Compensation Claims requiring attendance by a claimant at an FCE should be quashed. While the JCC might have authority to compel a claimant’s attendance at an IME or before an expert medical advisor, there was no such statutory authority regarding an FCE at the time of claimant’s accidental injury.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Lewis v. Dollar Rent A Car, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 8541 (1st DCA, June 9, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.10.

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