Workers' Compensation
Listed below is McConnaughhay, Coonrod, Pope, Weaver & Stern, P.A.'s workers' compensation case law database. The database dates back until 1971 and includes over 5500 workers' compensation court decisions.
To view the case summaries, select one of the general topics listed below.
Wal Mart Stores, Inc. v. Liggon
21 FLW D425
Court determined that judge erred in refusing to allow
for an IME requested by the employer/carrier without
holding a hearing on the motion for an IME.
Workers' Compensation Rule of Procedure 4.140(a)
requires a hearing on such a motion particularly when
the motion does not set forth a statutory ground and
does not contain any facts regarding the reasonableness
of the request for an IME. The right to an IME is not
without limits and such right is subject to a
reasonableness requirement. In this case, the request
for an IME seemed to be reasonable since one year had
elapsed between the first IME and the second IME
request.
In order to prove PT status, a claimant has the burden
of establishing an inability to uninterruptedly do even
light work within a 100 mile radius of the injured
employee's residence due to physical restrictions. In
this case, from a medical standpoint, the claimant was
able only to engage in part time sedentary work. This
would not automatically require a determination of
permanent total status. In other words, a claimant who
can engage in part time sedentary work is not
permanently and totally disabled as a matter of law.
Court determined that judge's finding that the claimant
had been excused from doing a work search by his
physicians was not supported by evidence of record.
The claimant's work search was inadequate to support
the permanent total award made by the judge. The
claimant's bare complaints of continued pain so that
the claimant felt unable to work is insufficient to
override medical testimony to the contrary and to prove
inabilty to work. In light of the uncontroverted
opinions of each of her doctors, together with those of
the rehabilitation specialist, that the claimant could
work on at least a part time sedentary basis, the
claimant's minimal work search, contrary to the JCC's
findings, is not adequate as a matter of law to support
a permanent total finding.
Permanent total disability benefits denied also because
of the fact that a job had been offered to the claimant
by the employer. Claimant alleged that the offered job
was sheltered. If an employer creates a job for an
employee merely as a litigation tactic in a workers'
compensation case, such a job cannot be said to
constitute gainful employment as that term is used in
Section 440.15(1)(b), Florida Statutes. In this case,
it was found by the court that the offered position was
not a specially created position. Modifications were
made in the job that was being offered but such
modifications did not make the offered job sheltered.
