Florida: JCC May Not Reduce Jointly Agreed Upon Attorney’s Fee

In what appears to be Florida’s never-ending battle over attorney’s fees within the workers’ compensation system, a state appellate court reversed a portion of a Judge of Compensation Claims that reduced the agreed upon amount of the Employer/Carrier-paid attorney’s fee and had required the excess be remitted to the claimant personally. In its per curiam decision, the Court held the “JCC's own subjective and personal experience of what he deemed reasonable" was not sufficient to rebut a claimant's counsel's sworn affidavit or the representations of the Employer/Carrier's counsel. Citing Luces v. Red Ventures, 140 So. 3d 999 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014), the Court observed that chapter 440 limited the authority of JCCs and did not authorize them to reform the agreements of the parties on their own motion. Moreover, a JCC was without authority to redirect the attorney's fee from counsel to claimant as an exercise of plenary equitable jurisdiction.

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 Banegas v. ACR Envtl., Inc., 2017 Fla. App. LEXIS 16158 (Nov. 6, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 133.03.

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