Greetings, DOAH (Division of Admin Hearings) has published their WC litigation annual report. Some of the comparisons are not apples to apples, DOAH’s fiscal year for the report runs from July 2020 through June 2021. For the comparison, they use the last fiscal year, July 2019 through June 2020. Really only 3 months of the […]

Greetings, Once again, as we prepare to gather with family and friends to celebrate the season, we must be on our toes for 1-time change shenanigans. As we are all aware, based on multiple 1st DCA decisions interpreting the 1-time change section of the FL WC statute (440.13(2)(f)), we have 5 calendar days to respond […]

Greetings, Often, we have to treat a claimant’s underlying personal health condition to get it under control so they can treat for our compensable WC injury.  The treatment of personal health conditions would fall under the Hindrance to recovery theory, and common unrelated conditions we see include uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, weight-loss and smoking. […]

Greetings, Well maybe I don’t know what I thought I knew. Since the 1989 Grimes case, the law on idiopathic accidents had been fairly well settled.   Idiopathic accidents are when  a claimant is just walking and their knee gives way, or they pass out, suffer a seizure etc… These types of accident do not “arise […]

Greetings, Several issues often pop up after a claimant is seen at the hospital following a work accident.   Here are a couple of scenarios, resulting issues and possible solutions: Employer doesn’t know the claimant went to the hospital–  Sometimes the Employer may be unaware the accident occurred.  Other times, the Employer is aware of the […]

Greetings, As you can imagine with the surge in Covid cases due to the Delta variant, I am seeing a big increase in the number of questions I am getting about Covid compensability situations. My colleague Wes Heim in our Tampa office is preparing an article summarizing all of the JCC level cases that touched […]

Greetings, Over the last week I have received several questions about compensability of accidents in parking lots and being off the clock.  First issue that needs to be sorted out is whether the parking lot is considered the employer’s premises.   Under the Premises Rule, even if an employee is clocked out, and is on their […]

Greetings, On June 30, the 1st DCA ruled on whether an Employer/Carrier has to authorize a “referral for Medical Marijuana” in Jones v. Grace Healthcare (1D19-1684), case attached.   The DCA found the E/C did not have to authorize the referral: “Under Florida law, marijuana is not reimbursable within our worker’s compensation system. Moreover, extant federal […]