Florida: Employee Fired Before Actual Filing of Claim May Still Pursue Retaliatory Discharge Action

Where an injured employee was fired less than two weeks after sustaining an injury and before he had actually filed a workers’ compensation claim, he could nevertheless pursue a retaliatory discharge action, held a Florida appellate court. The court noted that the employee had taken steps to collect a workers’ compensation claim even though he had not yet filed it. The court stressed that under the trial court’s erroneous reading of the retaliation statute, § 440.205, Fla. Stat., an employer could circumvent the anti-retaliation rules by terminating an employee immediately upon his or her injury, before the employee had a chance to file the claim.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Salus v. Island Hosp. Fla. Mgmt., 2020 Fla. App. LEXIS 453 (4th DCA, Jan. 15, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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