Florida: Appellate Court Overturns Trial Court’s Ruling That NCCI and OIR Violated Open Meetings Law

A Florida appellate court held that a state trial court erred when it declared the final order of the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) approving a 14.5 percent increase in workers’ compensation insurance rates void and in concluding that the OIR and the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) violated the state’s “Sunshine Law” [§ 286.011, Fla. Stat.], which generally prohibits governmental meetings to be closed to the public. The appellate court reasoned that the Sunshine Law applies only when the rate-determination committee of a rating organization meets to determine workers’ compensation insurance rates. Neither NCCI’s internal meetings nor the meetings between it and the OIR were subject to the open meetings law.

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 Nat’l Council on Comp. Ins. v. Fee, 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 6518 (1st DCA, May 9, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 150.06.

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