Wright v. Gulf and Western Food Products, 56817
| Decision Date | 23 July 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 56817,56817 |
| Parties | Tillman WRIGHT, Petitioner, v. GULF AND WESTERN FOOD PRODUCTS and Risk Management Services, Inc., Respondents. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Richard A. Kupfer of Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth, West Palm Beach, for petitioner.
Robert D. McAliley of Brennan, McAliley, Hayskar & McAliley, West Palm Beach, for respondents.
We have for consideration a petition for writ of certiorari directed to the Industrial Relations Commission pursuant to the authority of article V, section 3(b)(3), Florida Constitution (1972). Since the filing of this petition, the Industrial Relations Commission has been abolished, and the jurisdiction to review orders of Judges of Industrial Claims has been transferred to the District Court of Appeal, First District.
The facts of the case are basically undisputed. Claimant, at the time of his hearing before the Judge of Industrial Claims, was a sixty-year-old black man with no formal education who started working on a farm at the age of eight, who could neither read nor write, could not make change, and had been missing his left arm since the age of fifteen. His right knee was injured by an accident arising out of and in the course and scope of his employment on December 5, 1976. After receiving treatment for this injury, claimant attained maximum medical improvement on January 30, 1978.
The Judge of Industrial Claims conducted a hearing to determine the extent of claimant's disability and found that the merger of the knee injury with the preexisting loss of arm, considered in conjunction with claimant's illiteracy, resulted in permanent total disability. In addition, the judge, noting that the claimant would need the most benevolent employer to hire him in sheltered employment for what work he was capable of doing, found that he was unemployable in the existing labor market.
Upon review, the Industrial Relations Commission reversed the order, holding that the lack of medical opinion or lay testimony that the knee injury interacted with the loss of the left arm to enhance the permanent physical impairment resulting from the knee injury precluded the use of wage-earning capacity loss criteria. On the employability issue, the commission decided that claimant had not undertaken a viable work search as required by Exxon Company v. Alexis, 370 So.2d 1128 (Fla. 1978), since his physical impairment did not approach the level at which a work search could be excused.
Commissioner Shaw dissented, stating that he believed that there was competent, substantial evidence that the combination of the knee injury, arm loss, and other factors operated to completely destroy claimant's wage-earning capacity. On the issue of work search, he believed that the claimant had made an adequate showing as required by Exxon.
The scope of this Court's review of orders of the Judge of Industrial Claims and Industrial Relations Commission has been the subject of much discussion. Perhaps the most definitive statement was made in Colvin v. State Department of Transportation, 311 So.2d 366 (Fla. 1975), in which we specifically wrote:
JIC findings and awards or denials thereof can be overthrown only if not well founded under applicable legal principles, which would include a misapplication of applicable law, or upon a showing of a lack of competent evidence to support the findings or the ruling of the trial judge. IRC affirmance when there is such a lack of evidence or reversal where the evidence is in fact sufficient, would constitute a "departure from the essential requirements of law" which would vest jurisdiction for certiorari in the Supreme Court.
Under applicable law, we believe the Judge of Industrial Claims had substantial competent evidence upon which to base his order.
In relation to the issue of the so-called "merger" of the knee injury with the arm loss, the Commission has taken too strict a view. A reading of the entire JIC order leads to the conclusion that the use of the term "merger" was not in any medical sense but rather in the more general sense of a combination, in this case the combination of all the factors which influence claimant's employability, to wit, physical disabilities, age, education, job skills, and rehabilitation prospects.
stated that loss of wage-earning capacity must be determined in accordance with the facts of the case and that relevant considerations included physical condition, age, industrial...
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