University Medical Center v. Sumpter

• Decision Date: 09 December 1991
• Docket Number: No. 91-409,91-409
• Citation: 591 So.2d 288
• Parties: 16 Fla. L. Weekly D3030 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER and Johns Eastern Company, Inc., Appellants, v. Tyrone SUMPTER, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 288

591 So.2d 288

16 Fla. L. Weekly D3030

UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER and Johns Eastern Company, Inc., Appellants, v. Tyrone SUMPTER, Appellee.

No. 91-409.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

First District.

Dec. 9, 1991.

Jack W. Bettman, Jacksonville, for appellants.

Martin J. Mickler, of Martin J. Mickler, P.A., Jacksonville, for appellee.

SHIVERS, Judge.

The employer/carrier (E/C) in this workers' compensation case appeal an order entered by the judge of compensation claims (JCC) finding the E/C to have improperly taken a social security offset against wage-loss benefits paid to the claimant since January 1990. We affirm the order.

The record on appeal indicates that the appellee/claimant sustained a compensable back injury on July 3, 1986, and began receiving various types of workers' compensation benefits, including wage-loss, soon thereafter. Claimant also began receiving social security disability benefits at some point after the accident but, through at least the end of 1989, the E/C made no attempt to take a social security offset against wage-loss benefits paid, pursuant to this court's holding in Good Housekeeping Gas Co. v. Kitler, 492 So.2d 700 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986). In that case, it was held that, since wage-loss benefits were paid monthly, section 440.15(9)(a), Florida Statutes (1985), ¹ which applied only to weekly workers' compensation benefits, did not authorize the taking of a social security offset against wage-loss paid to a claimant. Effective October 1, 1989, the Legislature amended section 440.15(3)(b)1, Florida Statutes, to provide that wage-loss benefits would be based on an employee's average weekly, rather than monthly, wages. As a result, the E/C began in January 1990 to take a social security offset against the wage-loss benefits that were being paid to the claimant.

Claimant subsequently filed a claim for the unpaid balance of his wage-loss benefits, arguing that the social security offset was improper. After a hearing on that issue, the JCC entered an order finding (1) that the October 1, 1989 amendment to section 440.15(3)(b)1 "created a new offset with the result that there was a reduction in the aggregate of claimant's total workers' compensation and social security benefits due and payable"; (2) that, as a result, the rule set out in American Bankers Insurance Co. v. Little, 393 So.2d 1063 (Fla.1980) was not applicable; and (3) that claimant was entitled to the balance of wage-loss benefits underpaid as a result of the improperly taken offset. We agree with each of these findings.

In American Bankers, supra, the Florida Supreme Court considered the retroactivity of a 1973 amendment to section 440.15(10) Florida Statutes, which created the right of an employer to offset workers' compensation disability payments by the amount of an injured employee's weekly federal social security disability payment. At the time of the amendment's enactment, the Federal Social Security Act contained a provision allowing the Social Security Administration to claim an offset from state-generated benefits. Both the federal and state acts contained "hold harmless" provisions guaranteeing payment of the maximum disability benefits available under either social security or workers' compensation, thus insuring that the employee would not receive a decrease in benefits due to double offsetting by both the E/C and the Social Security Administration.

The question raised in American Bankers, then, was whether the retroactive application of the amendment to section 440.15(10) would impair the claimants' substantive rights existing at the time of their injuries. The court found that their rights would not be so impaired, holding:

The claimants [sic] only vested right in this case is to receive a certain total dollar amount in combined state and federal disability payments and neither has demonstrated that he or she has suffered any diminution of those benefits by reason of the subsequent enactment and implementation of the offset authorized by section 440.15(10). Both before and after the enactment of Florida's offset provision, claimants who have been injured receive the same maximum percent of weekly earnings. The hold harmless provisions in both the federal and state statutes effectively guarantee payment of the maximum disability benefits available under either social security or workmen's compensation. Accordingly, the mere shift in the source of payments from predominantly state-generated payments to predominantly federally-generated...