No Compensation for Pain & Suffering Under Florida’s Workers’ Compensation System

scales of justice.jpgOne of the most difficult concepts for our workers’ compensation clients to understand is that they will not receive any monetary compensation through Florida’s workers’ compensation system for pain and suffering. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The notion is counterintuitive. Compounding the difficulty in understanding, much less accepting the concept, is that pain and suffering damages are payable in other types of injury cases – e.g., premises liability, medical malpractice, products liability.

To make sure our clients understand the concept, we begin the discussion at the initial conference and keep it going until the case is brought to a successful conclusion. Even then, the concept never sinks in fully with some of our clients.

Florida’s workers’ compensation system was established some 80 years ago to provide injured workers with basic benefits (medical and indeminty) without first having to prove that the accident was caused by someone else. It was designed to be a no-fault system, where benefits would be provided quickly and efficiently to hasten a return to the work force.

In exchange for the timely provision of benefits without regard to fault, injured workers were forced to give up the right to receive compensation for pain and suffering. This can be a difficult concept for some injured workers to understand and accept.

Commentary: beginning with the election of Jeb Bush as Florida’s governor in the late 1990s, the worth of workers’ compensation benefits have been slashed and burned to a point of being a mere pittance of what they were originally designed to be. Some argue, myself included, that because of this erosion, the original exchange deal is no longer fair, now being grossly lopsided in favor of business/insurance. Since the workers’ compensation is no longer fair and just, it should be scrapped altogether so that injured workers are free to pursue remedies through the civil justice system.
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Contact us toll free at 866-785-GALE or by email to learn your legal rights.

Jeffrey P. Gale, P.A. is a South Florida based law firm committed to the judicial system and to representing and obtaining justice for individuals – the poor, the injured, the forgotten, the voiceless, the defenseless and the damned, and to protecting the rights of such people from corporate and government oppression. We do not represent government, corporations or large business interests

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One response to “No Compensation for Pain & Suffering Under Florida’s Workers’ Compensation System”

  1. xania says:

    The power & ability of a W/C insurer to totally devastate the life of an injured worker cannot be comprehended until the suffering is experienced 1st hand. Billboards on the highway, signs in the work place declaring “Worker’s Comp Works for You” are an assault on the common sense and common decency of any fair person. More than 5 years after a minor injury snd 3 years with legal counsel, they have succeeded in ruining my husband’s health by turning a blind eye to the onset of CRPS, refusing to definitively diagnose until it was too late, resulting in full body stage 4. Destroying a career, inflicting constant stressful emotional upheaval on both of us,and shifting all the burdens of a shared life onto me, and depriving me of his companionship. Their desire is to box the person in and wear them out until they win by default. If the legislators, adjusters,case managers, lawyers, and doctors had to spend one week in my husband’s body they would sing a different tune.

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