Florida: JCC Has No Jurisdiction to Order Reinstatement of Injured Worker's Personal Leave Account with Employer

A JCC's decision to deny claimant's request for temporary disability benefits on the basis that the claimant had received full pay during the period from the claimant's bank of accumulated sick time was error, held a Florida appellate court. The JCC lacked the jurisdiction necessary to require the employer to restore the claimant's personal leave account. Moreover, the burden was upon the party claiming a credit or offset to show it was entitled to one. Here, the employer had not raised the offset defense and the employer introduced no evidence that the alternate benefits it claimed had been paid were of qualifying value and nature. Certainly the claimant's benefits could not exceed 100 percent of his average weekly wage, but there was insufficient evidence before the JCC to make such a determination.

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 Medina v. Miami Dade County, 2020 Fla. App. LEXIS 10146 (1st DCA, July 15, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 82.01.

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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