Fla. High Court Considers Appellate Reach on Workers’ Compensation Immunity Issues

25 for 25 in '25

We throw it back to 2004 and take a look at a case from the top court of Florida, which dug into the boring-but-important question of what courts can and can't do with workers' compensation questions. Simply Research subscribers have access to the full text of the decision.

Case

Reeves v. Fleetwood Homes of Florida Inc., No. SC03-134 (Fla. 2004)

What Happened

A manufacturer that used forklifts to transport roofing material at its factor instructed forklift operators to honk the horn to signal to nearby workers to move out of the way and that operators were to continue transporting their loads even if a worker did not move.

Following this procedure, an operator entered an area where an employee was working and honked the horn. The employee did not move and as the operator was driving the forklift toward him, the load collided with a pipe, fell off the forklift, and struck the employee, who sustained severe injuries and died shortly after the accident.

Management at the factor knew that forklift operators had occasionally bumped the pipe when transporting wide loads, but no evidence indicated that a load had ever fallen off a forklift or that a worker had been injured as a result of the procedure.

OSHA investigated the accident, declining to treat it as a willful violation of safety regulations. OSHA fined the manufacturer $7,000 and ordered corrective action.

The employee's widow sued the manufacturer, alleging that the manufacturer engaged in "conduct substantially certain to result in [the employee's] injury or death."

The trial court ruled that the manufacturer committed intentional acts that were "substantially certain to result in injury or death" to the employee.

The appellate court decided that the trial court departed from the essential requirements of the law by applying the concept of an inevitable accident as a method of establishing gross negligence and an intentional tort and so the case ended up before the Florida Supreme Court.

Rule of Law

In rules of appellate procedure effective at the time in Florida, "Appeals to the district courts of appeal of non-final orders are limited to those that ... determine... that, as a matter of law, a party is not entitled to workers' compensation immunity."

What the Florida Supreme Court Said

The Florida Supreme Court reviewed the precedent cases of Hastings v. Demming, 694 So. 2d 718 (Fla. 1997) and Florida Department of Corrections v. Culver, 716 So. 2d 768 (Fla. 1998) and explained that an appellate court does not have jurisdiction to review a nonfinal order denying summary final judgment unless the trial court's order explicitly states that the defendant (in this case the manufacturer) will not be entitled to present a workers' compensation immunity defense at trial.

"Recognizing that the respondents — the parties moving for summary judgment — carried the burden to demonstrate that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law, the circuit court simply concluded that the respondents had not satisfied that burden, and thus utilized the phrase 'as a matter of law' in the factual section of the order," the Florida Supreme Court explained. "The adjudication section of the order is clearly a simple denial of the motion for summary judgment." 

Since the appellate court did not have jurisdiction to review the trial court's nonfinal order, it sent the case back to the appellate court to consider whether the employee's death could be treated as an intentional tort.

Takeaway

Procedural issues can have important consequences on workers' cases and can determine whether and when a case gets decided.

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