Florida Family Files Tort Claim Over Delayed Worker's Comp Benefits
Blinded in a workplace shooting four years ago that killed several others, 34-year-old Jamie Dolan also reportedly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks.
He has been awarded $1,300 a month in worker’s compensation benefits, plus medical expenses. But getting the latter has been a struggle, according to the St. Petersburg Times, as his insurance carrier delayed and stonewalled concerning the care he needs during his continuing recovery. Recently, he and his wife received a $163,000 payment for the four years of care she provided, after giving up her job to help him, but that is all they and their three children have to live on for the foreseeable future.
Part of the reason why such benefit delays are occurring may be a 2003 law limiting the amount of attorney fees that lawyers can be paid for taking on worker’s comp cases: In an apparently unrelated worker’s comp case now before Florida Supreme Court, an attorney was paid $650 for 80 hours of legal work, according to the Times.
“Tom Carey, one of the Dolans’ lawyers in the emotional distress suit, said the new law has produced a ‘bunker mentality’ in which insurance companies reject claims with impunity because so few lawyers are willing to handle these cases,” the newspaper writes.
However, the law has helped reduced worker’s comp premiums that employers pay by reducing fraudulent claims, says William Stander of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, an industry trade group.
“They say the law keeps people from getting attorneys, but they’re obviously representing this man,” he tells the newspaper, referring to the Dolans.
It appears from the Times article that the family filed an insurance coverage claim last week, seeking tort damages including emotional distress due to the carrier’s claimed failure to pay required worker’s comp benefits.
