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April 25, 2024
California Department of Industrial Relations and Cal/OSHA Will Honor Workers’ Memorial Day at Four Events in California on April 28th-29th 2024. Cal/OSHA Joining Partners in Arcadia, Richmond, San Diego and San Francisco.

April 23, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Launches Online Portal for Submission of QME Medical-Legal Reports

April 22, 2024
California Division of Workers’ Compensation Posts Updated Time of Hire Notice

April 22, 2024
Sullivan on Comp Launches ChatSOC. It's an Innovative Chatbot for California Workers' Compensation Professionals Integrated with an Authoritative Legal Treatise

For Florida, the National Council on Compensation Insurance Inc. (NCCI) has produced numbers stating that the average Florida applicants’ attorney fee per award was $4,978.00 between May 2016 and September 2016.  But the average applicant attorney fee from May 2015 through September 2015 was $4,095 per award.  These numbers were sent to Business Insurance Magazine on Monday, November 21^st 2016.

Clearly showing an increase from 2015 to 2016, the point can be made that the April 28^th 2016 ruling from the Florida Supreme Court declaring the mandatory fee schedule in section 440.34 as unconstitutional served as a catalyst to this increase.  It was ruled that 440.34 is a violation of due process both under the state and federal Constitutions because it creates an irrebuttable presumption that precludes any consideration of whether the fee award is reasonable to compensate an applicants’ attorney.   

Claimant Marvin Castellanos, injured in the course and scope of his employment, prevailed in his workers’ compensation claim represented by counsel. But the fee awarded to Castellanos’ attorney calculated out to only $1.53 per hour.   

Claimant Castellanos and his lawyer, as the Petitioners in the Supreme Court case, had no ability to challenge the reasonableness of the hourly rate as both the Judge of Compensation Claims and the First District Court of Appeal were precluded by Fla. Stat. 440.34.   440.34 mandates a conclusive fee schedule for awarding attorneys’ fees in a workers’ compensation case from assessing the award amount to the claimant and the reasonableness of that award.  

Thus, the Florida Supreme Court’s April 2016 ruling in Marvin Castellanos v. Next Door Co. et al has set a precedent that may be far reaching to the West.  This challenge that has recently prevailed could ripple to California.

Other service providers, besides just applicants’ attorneys, in California have been placed in a vice grip by what they express as decimating revenue restrictions created by recent fee schedule reductions.  Carlos Jimenez of Translating Sources, Inc. wrote to this writer last Thursday night, November 17^th 2016, “I have had to end operations after 30 years in business.” 

He expressed the crushing of the fee schedules has served to “kill the local interpreting agencies by financially strangling us.”  Carlos generally indicated that the regulations now deny the interpreters payment as they require processes that make it economically prohibitive to stay in business.

lonce@adjustercom.com, Lonce LaMon, journalist; credit to Business Insurance Magazine