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Fourth DCA: Circuit Courts Have No Authority to Modify Orders of the JCC Because of a Change in Circumstances

By David A. McCranie, Esq.

In what the court described as a "battle. . . between common sense and . . . procedural limitations," the Fourth DCA affirmed the trial court's grant of the claimant's petition for rule nisi in City of Hollywood v. Benoit, decided on 1/21/2009.

 

The problem in the case stems from the fact that the judges of compensation claims - the executive branch officials who are charged with adjudicating disputes in Florida workers' compensation cases - have no real authority to enforce the orders that they render.  So if one party refuses to comply with a workers' compensation order, the aggrieved party must go to the circuit court - the court of general jurisdiction - to obtain a "rule nisi" which compels the recalcitrant party to comply with the order.

 

But the statute which governs the issuance of rules nisi only goes so far.  It gives the circuit court no authority to resolve factual disputes between the parties that may have arisen since the JCC originally entered his order.  Hence the problem in Benoit.

 

The claimant there had been catastrophically injured in an on-the-job accident, necessitatingthat he receive "attendant care" 24 hours per day.  The parties agreed in 1996 that the claimant's mother would actually provide the care for 12 hours per day and that the employer/carrier would compensate her accordingly.  The judge of compensation claims later entered an order incorporating and adopting the terms of the parties' agreement.

 

But in 2007 the claimant suffered yet another injury.  He was then transferred to a facility where he began receiving round-the-clock attendant care.  Thus, at that point he neither needed nor received the 12-hour-per-day care he had been receiving from his mother.  Common sense might suggest that the employer/carrier could then just suspend the payments they had been making to the mother.  And that's exactly what they did.

 

But the claimant contended that the JCC's 1996 order was still in force, so he filed a petition for benefits with the JCC seeking an order to compel the carrier to resume the payments.  Concluding that he lacked authority to grant relief, however, the JCC ruled that the claimant must instead seek relief in the circuit court through a rule nisi petition.

 

When he did so, the employer/carrier complained that the circuit court should not enforce the 1996 order because of the material change in circumstances that had occurred since its entry: the mother hadn't actually rendered any care since the claimant's 2007 transfer to the medical facility, so she shouldn't be paid for it.  The circuit court obviously recognized the problem.  Yet it concluded - correctly - that the statute gave him no authority to recognize the change of circumstances which had occurred.  So the court did what was perhaps the next best thing - it granted the petition and ordered the carrier to make the payments, but it gave them the option of paying the money into the registry of the court instead of to the mother.  The employer/carrier appealed the order, but on appeal the Fourth DCA affirmed.

 

So how should the situation have been handled?  Just my opinion, of course, but probably the employer/carrier should have filed a petition for modification of the 1996 order when circumstances changed in 2007.  The JCC clearly has the authority to do that.

Full post as published by Florida Workers’ Compensation Law Blog on January 31, 2009 (boomark / email).