RAYMOND JAMES & ASSOCIATES v. Smith
Decision Date | 11 December 2003 |
Docket Number | No. 1D02-5231.,1D02-5231. |
Citation | 860 So.2d 1081 |
Parties | RAYMOND JAMES & ASSOCIATES and Chubb Services Corporation, Appellants, v. Desiree SMITH, Appellee. |
Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Jack A. Weiss, Esquire of Fowler, White, Boggs, Banker, P.A., St. Petersburg, for Appellants.
Leslie C. Riviere, Esquire of Harris & Riviere, Tampa, for Appellee.
An employer and its insurance carrier appeal a final order requiring payment of "permanent total disability benefits at the rate of $209.47 per week, plus appropriate supplemental benefits" rather than at the reduced rate the appellants began paying when they accepted Desiree Smith as permanently totally disabled and recalculated the "reverse offset" for social security disability benefits they first took against temporary total disability benefits. We affirm.
The final order chronicles pertinent events with clarity and precision on which we are unable to improve:
In response to the reduced payments, Ms. Smith filed the petition for benefits which eventuated in the final order under review.
"Florida is ... considered, in social security terminology, a `reverse offset' state, since the statutory scheme provides that the workers' compensation carrier takes the offset." Burks v. Day's Harvesting, Inc., 597 So.2d 858, 860 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992). In pertinent part, section 440.15(10)(a), Florida Statutes (1997), provides:
Weekly compensation benefits payable under this chapter for disability resulting from injuries to an employee who becomes eligible for benefits under 42 U.S.C. s. 423 shall be reduced to an amount whereby the sum of such compensation benefits payable ... for such period to the employee and her or his dependents, had such employee not been entitled to benefits under this chapter, under 42 U.S.C. ss. 402 and 423, does not exceed 80 percent of the employee's average weekly wage.
This language authorizes a "reverse offset" against compensation benefits without regard to whether the benefits are permanent or temporary. At issue in the present case is whether, once such an offset has been taken against temporary benefits, the amount of the offset is subject to recalculation when temporary payments end and permanent benefits begin.
Without "express[ing] any opinion as to whether supplemental benefits accruing prior to the date the injured worker is accepted as permanently and totally disabled should be included in the initial offset calculations," City of Clearwater v. Acker, 755 So.2d 597, 602 (Fla.1999) (reh'g denied 2000), our supreme court has made it clear that an offset taken against permanent total disability benefits ought not thereafter be increased in a way that "would prevent injured workers from receiving cost-of-living increases." Id. at 600. Our own cases have likewise condemned such recalculations, while including supplemental benefits accruing prior to the date the injured worker is accepted as permanently and totally disabled in the initial offset calculations. See Jackson v. Hochadel Roofing Co., 794 So.2d 668, 671 (Fla. 1st DCA 2001); Fla. Power Corp. v. Van Loan, 764 So.2d 708, 710 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000); Conklin v. Ford, 737 So.2d 602, 602-03 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999), approved, 781 So.2d 1070 (Fla.2001); Cruse Constr. v. St. Remy, 704 So.2d 1100, 1101 (Fla. 1st DCA 1997); Hunt v. Stratton, 677 So.2d 64, 67 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996). We have also held...
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The social security disability offset: a comprehensive review of statutory and case law guiding reduction in Florida workers' compensation benefits.
...the offset. The court ruled that the judge of compensation claims was correct on both counts. Raymond James & Associates v. Smith, 860 So. 2d 1081 (Fla. 1st DCA 2003), reaffirmed the concept that Florida is considered a reverse offset state, allowing the state workers' compensation carr......