Will All Appeals of JCC Orders Continue to go to Only the 1st DCA?

Saturday, September 22, 2007 | 0

By Mark Zientz

Maybe not.

Or at least not if Richard Sicking, Esq. prevails in Raul Saldana vs. Miami-Dade County, Case # SC07-1110 filed June 15, 2007 as a Petition for a Writ of Prohibition. Mr. Sicking is asking the Supreme Court to prohibit the 1 DCA from hearing an appeal from an order of a MIA JCC entered in Miami-Dade county and to transfer "jurisdiction" over the appeal to the 3rd DCA.

I have long thought that the statute sending all appeals of workers' compensation matters, which are really private claims between employees and employers to one DCA, was unconstitutional.

Even if the Supreme Court in its decision finding the statute constitutional in the early 1980s was correct then, it is no longer correct now. The basis for the court OK of sending all WC appeals to the 1st DCA in Tallahassee was that, at the time, the Divison of Workers' Compensation, a State of Florida Agency, was not only a 'party' to all WC appeals but was also 'housed' in Tallahassee which is in the geographical jurisdiction of the 1st DCA.

In the mid-1980s the statute making the Division a party was changed.

The division is no longer a party, and therefore, there is no real legal basis for engaging in the fiction that the appeals have to go, or can legally be placed where the division is 'housed'.

The "England" court of the early 80s made no bones about wanting to restrict its own jurisdiction. The court lobbied for the constitutional change made in 1980 that in fact did restrict the mandatory and the discretionary jurisdiction of the Court.

The statutory change putting all WC appeals in the 1st DCA accomplished yet a further reduction in the courts case load by making it impossible for there to be "an express and direct conflict" between decisions of two different district courts of appeal. The 1st DCA hears all appeals equals minimal possible conflict jurisdiction for the court.

Since 1980, the court has actually accepted only two conflict cases involving WC issues. One found an express and direct conflict with a prior Supreme Court decision and the other a conflict between two DCAs on an issue related to liens against third party recoveries, which allow appeals to the various district courts.

Other constitutional issue cases and some certified questions have been heard by the court since 1980, but not many.

Recently the court has even declined to hear certified questions posed by the 1st DCA in attorney fee issue cases.

So will the current court decide that WC appeals should go to the DCAs that cover the geographical area the JCC order comes from?

Or will 4/5ths of Florida voters be denied the right to vote to retain the DCA judges that must hear their appeals in WC cases?

Stay tuned.

Mark Zientz is a board certified attorney in workers' compensation by the Florida Bar. His Web log can be viewed by visiting www.mzlaw.com.

-------------------

The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of workcompcentral.com, its editors or management.