YEIMIS BANEGAS, APPELLANT,
v.
ACR ENVIRONMENTAL, INC., AND BERKLEY SPECIALTY UNDERWRITING MANAGERS, APPELLEES

Fla. 1st DCA | 2017-11-06
No. CASE NO. 1D17-1251
LEWIS, MAKAR, and OSTERHAUS, JJ„ CONCUR.
228 So. 3d 734 Florida District Court of Appeal, First District (2017) Positive Treatment
Cited by 2 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

The court held that a Judge of Compensation Claims (JCC) erred in reducing an agreed-upon attorney's fee without sufficient evidence to rebut the claimant's counsel's sworn affidavit.


Facts & Procedural History

Claimant's counsel challenged the JCC's order reducing an agreed-upon attorney's fee and requiring remittance of the excess to the claimant. The JCC m…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

In this workers’ compensation appeal, Claimant, through her counsel, challenges the Judge of Compensation Claims’ (JCC’s) order reducing the. jointly, agreed upon amount of the Employer/Carrier-paid attorney’s fee and requiring that the excess amount be remitted to Claimant personally. We reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

We review for competent, substantial evidence the issue of the reasonableness of ah attorney’s fee. See Sanchez v. Woerner Mgmt., Inc., 867 So.2d 1173 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004). Neither argument of counsel nor “the JCC’s reductions and deletions .,. based solely on the JCC’s own subjective and personal experience of what he deemed reasonable” are sufficient to rebut a claimant’s counsel’s sworn affidavit. See Minerd v. Walgreens, 962 So.2d 955, 957 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007). Because the record here contains no evidence to rebut Claimant’s counsel’s sworn affidavit or the representations of the Employer/Carrier’s counsel, the JCC erred in reducing the time entries contained within that affidavit.

In Luces v. Red Ventures, 140 So.3d 999 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014), we explained that “chapter 440 limits the authority of JCCs and does not authorize them to reform the agreements of the parties on their own motion.” Id. at 1000. Further, a JCC is “without authority to redirect the attorney’s fee from counsel to claimant as an exercise of plenary equitable jurisdiction.” Id. Here, the JCC erred in doing so.

*735Accordingly, we REVERSE the portion of the order reducing the agreed upon attorney’s fee as well as the portion of the order reforming the stipulation, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

LEWIS, MAKAR, and OSTERHAUS, JJ„ CONCUR.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

  • …g the reasonableness of the attorney’s fee. The record before us does not support those findings. Therefore, just as in the recently published Gomez v. Frank Crum, Inc., 228 So. 3d 2 735 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017), and Banegas v. ACR Environmental, Inc., 228 So. 3d 734 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017), we find reversible error. Accordingly, we REVERSE the portion of the order reducing the agreed upon attorney’s fee, as well as the portion of the order reforming the stipulation, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this…

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw