July 15, 2024
A Florida appellate court ruled Friday that an employer should have been entitled to fully collect on its workers compensation lien because an injured worker failed to prove she didn’t receive full value from her injuries in a third-party settlement.
The Florida Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed a trial judge’s decision that denied a bid by Captain D’s LLC to recover money it paid out to Regina Atkins in workers comp benefits.
The trial court had reduced Captain D’s workers comp lien because it determined that Ms. Akins never received full value for her injuries in her settlement with an unnamed third party.
Terms of the settlement were confidential.
During an apportionment hearing, Ms. Akins’ attorney stated that a fair value of the case was $1 million, but the appeals court said the attorney never explained how he arrived at that figure, and no evidence was provided to support that calculation.
Ms. Akins had the burden of providing “competent evidence” demonstrating that she didn’t recover the full value of her damages in the settlement, which was not done in this case, the appeals court wrote:
“That evidentiary failure here requires that we reverse and remand for recalculation of the lien apportionment amounts,” the court wrote.
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