Westphal involved a challenge to the constitutionality of Florida’s workers’ compensation scheme. The underlying issue was whether a workers’ compensation claimant who remains totally disabled at the end of the period of eligibility for temporary total disability benefits is effectively at maximum medical improvement and thus eligible to bring a permanent total disability claim. The en banc First District Court of Appeal reversed a prior panel’s decision declaring Florida’s limit for temporary total disability benefits unconstitutional.
Rehearing the case en banc, the court upheld the limit in section 440.15, Florida Statutes, and determined that a worker who exhausted his temporary total disability benefits has reached maximum medical improvement and is therefore eligible to apply for permanent and total benefits. Despite this seemingly favorable result to the workers’ compensation claimant, the claimant used the opportunity to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court to argue about the constitutionality of the statute. In conjunction with numerous other amici, the Florida Justice Reform Institute filed a brief in support of the scheme’s constitutionality. In spite of those efforts, the Florida Supreme Court held that the statute ending disability benefits prior to a worker attaining maximum medical improvement was unconstitutional as a denial of the right of access to courts.
FJRI represented by William H. Rogner