Castellanos v. Next Door Co.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013 | 0

In a case decided (or not decided!) by the Florida 1st District Court of Appeal on Oct. 23, claimant challenged the act as unconstitutional in its restriction, under the formula set forth in Section 440.34 (1), Florida statutes (2009), to an attorney's fee of only $164.54 where the attorney had expended 107.2 hours on claimant's behalf to obtain the benefit (which works out to 1.53 an hour).

The court noted and did the following:

Even though the judge of compensation claims described the statutory fee as inadequate, the District Court of course approved of the JCC's determination that he had no jurisdiction to consider the constitutional question.

Even though the constitutional question was properly before the 1st DCA, it determined based on (let's just say, everything that has happened thus far) that it was "bound to conclude that the statute is constitutional, both on its face and as applied."

The District Court noted in the landmark 'Murray' case, while the Supreme Court essentially dodged the constitutional question, the Supreme Court certainly seemed to indicate the statute was not unconstitutional.

And without another word, the 1st DCA then certified the question of the constitutional adequacy of the fee to the Supreme Court!

What?!?

What does it mean? Why no comment one way or the other? We can only guess.
 
Here is our guess. The District Court is tired. As in the movie Groundhog Day, the same cases keep coming back, and despite the personal feelings of individual members of the court, there is not much the court can do about them. The court has tried this, and it has tried that Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 − and while the statute's inflexibility to even allow for the possibility of an alternate fee in a situation like this strikes it (and good many others) as unfair as we have seen in Westphal (so far), "counting" (weeks, dollars, percentage points of impairment, etc.) rarely results in unconstitutionality. 
 
But, recall in Murray, the District Court concluded the statute was constitutional Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 − it was the Supreme Court that acted, but the Supreme Court did something unexpected: an ultra-technical reading of the statute that yielded a technical flaw, which was used as the basis for kicking the statute out, a flaw which the Legislature quickly corrected in 2009.

Now, here we are again, with that "perfect storm" of a fee we all knew would be presented one day. With Halloween just around the corner, we can say the Legislature has enacted a statute that says in effect "no treat: do your worst trick," essentially defying the courts to do something about it. Well, now we will know for sure if anything can be done about it.
 
MKRS LAW PROJECTION:

We have seen the Supreme Court tackle "unfairness," as it did in a long-ago MKRS case wherein it said it's the Legislature's business if it wants to compensate the loss of a violinist's finger the same as a jack hammer operator's finger (Mims & Thomas Mfg. Co. v. Ferguson, 340 So. 2d 920; Fla. 1976). But these are provocative facts and this time we also have that "other" storm coming from the other direction at the same time on the 'benefits' side of the equation, Westphal.
 
When will they decide? We really have no way of knowing; it could be anywhere from a few months to even a year.
 
Huge explosion or dud? We will all learn, but we hear ticking sounds.
 
Bottom Line: It is extremely difficult to shake all this up and pour out 'the' answer, but while the statute is clearly "unfair" in this application, individual hard cases do not impugn the integrity of the system as a whole, and therefore MKRS Law projects the act should, and will be, upheld.

H. George Kagan is a senior equity partner at MKRS Law in Palm Beach. This column was reprinted with his permission from the firm's client newsletter.