Carr v. Central Florida Aluminum Products, Inc., WW-234

• Decision Date: 26 August 1981
• Docket Number: No. WW-234,WW-234
• Citation: 402 So.2d 565
• Parties: Dirk Allan CARR, Appellant, v. CENTRAL FLORIDA ALUMINUM PRODUCTS, INC., and North River Insurance Company, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 565

402 So.2d 565

Dirk Allan CARR, Appellant, v. CENTRAL FLORIDA ALUMINUM PRODUCTS, INC., and North River Insurance Company, Appellees.

No. WW-234.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Aug. 26, 1981.

Larry Mark Polsky, Daytona Beach, for appellant.

Steven A. Rissman of Cooper & Rissman, P. A., Orlando, for appellees.

ROBERT P. SMITH, Jr., Chief Judge.

Carr appeals from a deputy commissioner's order denying him certain workers' compensation disability benefits for a thumb injury sustained in October 1979, after the 1979 amendments to the workers' compensation act, Chapter 440, Florida Statutes (1979) became effective. Although the injury left Carr physically impaired to the extent of 34 percent of the thumb and eight percent of the body according to a physician's estimate, the injury did not qualify Carr for "permanent impairment" benefits under Section 440.15(3)(a)1, which provides for a one-time payment up to $7,500 only to claimants suffering one of three types of permanent injuries: amputations, 80 percent or more vision loss, or serious head or facial disfigurement. Carr obviously does not fall into any of these special injury categories.

Carr contends that the 1979 statute violates his constitutional rights to equal protection, ¹ due process, ² and access to the courts for redress of injury. ³ Carr urges that we invalidate the 1979 statute and reactivate the prior and now repealed Chapter 440 benefits, entitling Carr to 60 weeks of compensation for a lost thumb, cf. State ex rel. Boyd v. Green, 355 So.2d 789 (Fla.1978), or that we remit Carr to common tort law remedies in circuit court. We sustain the 1979 statute under this constitutional challenge, and so affirm the deputy's decision that the benefits voluntarily paid appellant medical and temporary disability payments were all that were due.

Before 1979, Chapter 440 provided for recovery of permanent partial disability benefits based on a schedule for enumerated injuries and on the estimated degree of physical impairment or loss of wage-earning capacity in other cases. Section 440.15(3), Fla.Stat. (1977). In an effort to control high costs, inequitable awards, and delays in payment of claims, ⁴ the legislature in 1979 substituted "permanent impairment" benefits under Section 440.15(3)(a) and "wage-loss" benefits under Section 440.15(3)(b) for the disability benefits previously awarded for similar permanent injuries.

Addressing Carr's contention that the statutory classification offends the equal protection clause by denying him benefits for his permanently impaired thumb while granting benefits to those whose permanent impairment is by amputation, loss of 80 percent or more of vision, after correction, or serious facial or head disfigurement, Section 440.15(3)(a)1, our task is to determine whether the legislative classification was made on some reasonable basis, bearing a substantial relationship to a legitimate legislative purpose. Lasky v. State Farm Ins. Co., 296 So.2d 9, 18-20 (Fla.1974). Statutory classifications need not be mathematically precise, and they need not address all aspects of a problem at once. In re Estate of Greenberg, 390 So.2d 40 (Fla.1980).

The classification Carr complains of is not arbitrary but is grounded both in a reasonable contemporary view of the economic impact of amputations, sight loss, and head disfigurement, and in the history of workers' compensation legislation, which from the first presumed economic loss from injuries of this character. Seen in the context of a statutory purpose to compensate injured workers for actual wage loss rather than any longer for anatomic disability or loss of wage-earning capacity, the legislature has in effect presumed that these designated injuries will almost inevitably result in economic loss of the sort the legislature determined to compensate. Representative William Sadowski and senior aides to the House Insurance Committee, sponsors of the comprehensive 1979 workers' compensation legislation, contemporaneously expressed the legislature's rationale for extending special wage-loss benefits to the designated classes: ⁵

Amputations. The severance of a limb produces economically disabling consequences, mental and physical, which are "of a different order from the reactions to the loss of use of a limb," among them being the reality and realization that natural function can never be restored.

Loss of sight. Despite the resourcefulness of sightless persons and the growing sensitivity of a sighted society, "Blindness or a very severe restriction of vision is also in a class by itself because the ability to see is necessary in so many occupations."

Severe facial and head disfigurement. These injuries, too, have a presumptive impact on working careers and therefore on wages. "Facial and head disfigurement is a special kind of disfigurement because in our society clothing does not cover it up."

Mr. Sadowski and his coauthors stated: ⁶

The economic loss resulting from these injuries can be quantified on an actual wage-loss basis for the most part. But given the severity of these types of injuries, and given the very special kinds of problems associated with each, the legislature determined that some special recognition should be made apart from the wage-loss benefits available to everyone. The actual monetary award in the new section 440.15(3)(a) is not very large, but the special recognition of those who are truly injured is there.

These legislative findings are wholly consistent in principle, and to some extent in detail, with early workers' compensation legislation that scheduled a short list of injuries deemed uniquely productive of wage loss, so much so as to foreclose all reasonable debate on the issue. See A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law § 57.14(c):

The historical evidence is quite clear that the schedule was never intended to be a departure from or an exception to the wage-loss principle. The typical schedule, limited to obvious and easily-provable losses of members, was justified on two grounds: the gravity of the impairment supported a conclusive presumption that actual wage loss would sooner or later result; and the conspicuousness of the loss guaranteed that awards could be made with no controversy whatever.

We conclude that scheduling these obviously significant injuries for special treatment is reasonably related to the legislature's purpose of making the benefit payment system more efficient by eliminating endless debates before deputy commissioners and the courts over exactly what percentage of use of a limb, for instance, has been lost in a given case. In Larson's view, ⁷ the addition of "partial loss of use" of body members to scheduled permanent injuries was responsible for much of the complexity and litigiousness that attended the system in recent years, which the Florida legislature sought in 1979 to obviate.

For similar reasons we conclude that Section 440.15(3)(a)1 does not violate due process. The measure bears a reasonable relationship to permissible legislative objectives and is not discriminatory, arbitrary, or oppressive. Lasky, supra, 296 So.2d at 15.

On a single page Carr's brief raises, though he scarcely argues, that the 1979 wage-loss scheme as a whole offends Article I, Section 21 of the Florida Constitution, guaranteeing access to courts, by not providing an adequate alternative to common law remedies or statutory remedies in existence when the Constitution was adopted. See Kluger v. White, 281 So.2d 1 (Fla.1973). In view of the paucity of Carr's argument on the subject, we decline to recognize the issue as adequately raised for decision. Lynn v. City of Ft. Lauderdale, 81 So.2d 511, 513 (Fla.1955); 5 C.J.S. Appeal and Error § 1324(3) at pp. 341-42 (1958).

AFFIRMED.

MILLS, J., concurs.

WENTWORTH, J., concurs specially with opinion.

WENTWORTH, Judge, concurring specially.

Appellant's argument before the deputy and in this court challenges only § 440.15(3)(a)1 ¹ and § 440.11, ² Florida Statutes. He had already been paid for medical and temporary disability benefits, and did not claim any wage loss or attack the wage loss provisions even with respect to the minimum threshold loss...