Chicken 'N' Things v. Murray, No. 47034

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida
• Writing for the Court: HATCHETT; ROBERTS, Acting C.J., and ENGLAND; ADKINS; BOYD; ADKINS; BOYD
• Citation: 329 So.2d 302
• Decision Date: 17 March 1976
• Docket Number: No. 47034
• Parties: CHICKEN'N'THINGS and Insurance Company of North America, Petitioners, v. Martha MURRAY and the Florida Department of Commerce, Industrial Relations Commission, Respondents.

Page 302

329 So.2d 302 CHICKEN'N'THINGS and Insurance Company of North America, Petitioners,
v.
Martha MURRAY and the Florida Department of Commerce, Industrial Relations Commission, Respondents. No. 47034. Supreme Court of Florida. March 17, 1976.

Page 303

Marjorie D. Gadarian of Jones, Paine & Foster, West Palm Beach, for petitioners.

Lawrence U. L. Chandler, of Hamilton, James, Merkle & Young, Delray Beach, for respondents.

HATCHETT, Justice.

This case, which is indistinguishable ¹ from the run of cases decided by the Industrial Relations Commission, presents the question whether the industrial claims judge's fact findings, ² which the Industrial

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Relations Commission upheld, should now be overturned. We decline petitioner's invitation to interject ourselves at random as the primary finder of fact in workmen's compensation cases, and deny the petition for writ of certiorari.

In Scholastic Systems, Inc. v. LeLoup, 307 So.2d 166 (Fla.1974) (reh. den. 1975), the Court adopted 'the traditional standard of 'departure from the essential requirements of law,'' at 168, for reviewing decisions of the Industrial Relations Commission. As was there pointed out, this standard has been employed in other contexts, and has a well-defined meaning. The standard we recently decided to apply in cases like the one at bar is 'the same standard currently applied in certiorari review of orders of the Public Service Commission and in interlocutory petitions and common law certiorari.' Id.

The writ of common law certiorari is a means for review and correction of jurisdictional or other equally fundamental irregularities, and is not the proper procedure for challenging findings of fact, unless the fact-finding process has been marred by a departure from essential procedural requirements. In common law certiorari proceedings, findings of fact in the lower court are ordinarily conclusive. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Poole, 147 Fla. 686, 3 So.2d 386 (1941) ('It is not the province of this Court in reviewing a case on certiorari to go behind the judgment of the court below entered upon conflicting testimony.' At 386.) An encyclopedia of Florida law states the rule as follows:

On certiorari, the reviewing court will not ordinarily review conflicting evidence. In other words, it is not the province of the reviewing court to go behind the judgment of the court below entered upon conflicting evidence. Thus, the reviewing court will not ordinarily weigh the effect of the evidence, or consider its probative force if the conflicting evidence is legally sufficient to sustain the judgment. It will not even determine the sufficiency of the evidence

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if there was some evidence to support the verdict or judgment complained of, since to do so would confound the supervisory power of the reviewing court with its appellate jurisdiction. Nor will the higher could review the evidence to reconcile conflicting testimony. But the reviewing court will examine the record to determine whether there was any evidence at all to support the verdict or judgment, or whether there was such an absence of evidence, with resulting injury, as to amount to a departure from the essential requirements of the law. In doing so, the court will give the evidence a construction most favorable to the prevailing party.

5 Fla.Jur. Certiorari § 29 (1955) (footnotes omitted)

This is the standard for review which this Court decided in Scholastic Systems, Inc. v. LeLoup, supra, would govern in cases like the present one.

In appellate proceedings, trial judges' findings of fact are insulated against attack to a significant but somewhat lesser extent. We are bound by the trial court's view of the facts on appeal, unless the findings are clearly erroneous. Greenwood v. Oates, 251 So.2d 665, 669 (Fla.1971); A.B.C. Business Forms, Inc. v. Gelvan, 300 So.2d 64 (Fla.App.3d Dist. 1974); Hudson Pulp & Paper Corp. v. Butler & Co., 297 So.2d 103 (Fla.App.1st Dist. 1974). When proceedings begun in an administrative agency reach this Court by petition for writ of certiorari, however, the showing necessary to overturn fact findings is greater than the showing an appellant must make. Not only are agency fact finders, like trial judges, closer to the evidence than we are, they are presumably better equipped, because of their expertise, to resolve conflicts in the evidence. Although we may believe that an agency's findings of fact are mistaken, we are not at liberty to disregard them, unless there is no competent evidence, or only insubstantial evidence, to support the findings. DeGroot v. Sheffield, 95 So.2d 912, 916 (Fla.1957); Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc. v. Carter, 80 So.2d 322, 324 (Fla.1955). Cf. Federal Power Comm'n v. Florida Power & Light Co., 404 U.S. 453, 92 S.Ct. 637, 30 L.Ed.2d 600 (1972); NLRB v. Walton Mfg. Co., 369 U.S. 404, 407, 82 S.Ct. 853, 855, 7 L.Ed.2d 829 (1962); Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 71 S.Ct. 456, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951). This rule serves the legislative purpose to insulate agency decision making from interference by us, except where intervention is warranted because agency action has been arbitrary and capricious.

Like final orders of the Industrial Relations Commission, final orders of the Public Service Commission are initially judicially reviewable here. When orders of the Public Service Commission are challenged in this Court as being unsupported by the facts, this Court will uphold the orders even though it differs with the Commission's view as to the effect of the evidence as a whole, so long as there is competent substantial evidence to support the orders. Gulf Oil Co. v. Bevis, 322 So.2d 30 (Fla.1975); DeGroot v. Sheffield, supra at 916; Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc. v. Carter, supra at 324. The same rule applied on review of orders of the Public Service Commission's predecessor, the Railroad Commission. See State ex rel. Railroad Comm'rs v. Florida East Coast Ry. Co., 67 Fla. 83, 64 So. 443, 448 (1914); Note, Judicial Review of Administrative Findings of Fact: The Doctrine of Jurisdictional Facts in Florida, 2 U.Fla. Law Rev. 86, 93 (1949). An early statement of the rule, quoted in part and cited with approval in Gulf Oil Co. v. Bevis, supra, reads as follows:

The findings and conclusions and orders thereon . . . may be reviewed on certiorari, but such review is not appellate to determine whether error was committed in such findings and conclusions or in the orders as where writ of

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error or appeal is authorized or used. The review on certiorari is to determine whether the order as made is illegal as matter of law or was made without observing the provisions of law regulating the matters to be considered or the procedure for such findings and conclusions, or whether in its operation the order will violate organic or fundamental rights, or is merely arbitrary and without sufficient support in the evidence or proceedings had. If there is substantial competent evidence that is legally sufficient to support the findings and conclusions, and no rule of law was violated in the proceedings, and the whole record does not show an abuse of authority or arbitrary action, the findings and conclusions of the commission will not be set aside on certiorari even though the reviewing court might have reached different conclusions on the evidence.

Florida Motor Lines, Inc. v. State Railroad Comm'n, 101 Fla. 1018, 1044, 132 So. 851, 862 (1931).

We applied this rule in Mahler v. Lauderdale Lakes Nat'l Bank, 322 So.2d 507 (Fla. (1975), a case decided after Scholastic Systems, Inc. v. LeLoup, supra, which, like the present case, arose from the Industrial Relations Commission.

In Mahler, the Industrial Relations Commission reversed a determination of total permanent disability by the Judge of Industrial Claims. On petition here for writ of certiorari to review the Commission's order, this Court upheld the Commission, even though we indicated that we would also have upheld the Commission if it had Not overturned the industrial claims judge's findings. Cf. Sentinel Star Express Co. v....