Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeals overturned 32 years of legal precedent in a workers’ compensation case that could lead to the reopening of thousands of injury claims across the state. The court’s March 23 decision in Estes vs. Palm Beach County School District reinterpreted Florida’s 1994 workers’ compensation statute of limitations, establishing what attorneys call a “two clocks” approach to calculating claim deadlines.
The case originated from a teacher who was injured tripping over a broken handicap ramp in 2021. “In other words, the date of Estes’ PFB (petition for benefits) fell squarely within the running of the two-year limitations-period clock, which wouldn’t have expired until January 2026 under these facts,” appeals court Chief Judge Timothy Osterhaus wrote for the majority of the court. The insurer had stopped benefits in 2023, contending that the teacher’s continuing knee pain resulted from arthritis rather than the work injury.
“The case will have enormous implications, and I think there are probably thousands of cases where claimants have been erroneously advised that their cases have been closed, due to (the) statute of limitations, that will now be viable,” said Geoff Bichler, a claimants’ attorney who represents first responders and other injured workers around the state. Bichler said his firm already has begun canvassing some of the larger labor unions in the state to identify claims that had been denied under the previous reading of the statute of limitations.
The lead claimants’ attorney in the case, Randall Porcher of the Morgan & Morgan law firm, wrote in his appeal brief that the impact of a “two clocks” statute of limitations will be largely prospective, mostly affecting pending and future claims for permanent disability. Defense lawyer George Kagan, who was not involved in the litigation, agreed that most old claims cannot be revisited, but hundreds of pending claims will be governed by the new interpretation.
Florida’s workers’ compensation system operates under Chapter 440 of the Florida Statutes, providing medical benefits and wage replacement to employees injured on the job. The 1994 change to the workers’ compensation statute of limitations gives injured workers two years to file a claim from the date the employee knew or should have known of the injury, but also “tolls” the statute of limitations for one year from the date of the last benefit payment or medical treatment.
The Estes case turned on the exact meaning of the word “toll” - whether the law means the two-year limitation clock must be paused or should be extended and restarted, giving claimants much longer to contest denials or ending of benefits. For years, stakeholders have largely adhered to court interpretations from 1999, which essentially held that the two-year clock was stopped once the one-year clock was started. The 1st District Court concluded that “toll” means to suspend or stop temporarily, allowing the two-year statute to start again one year after the last medical treatment or indemnity benefit payment.
The decision was not unanimous, with two 1st District appeals judges penning strong dissents about the complexity the ruling creates. “The majority unnecessarily recedes from our easy-to-apply precedent, installs a regime that will be difficult if not impossible to apply in workers’ compensation cases, and potentially eliminates the statute of limitations in many cases,” 1st District Judge Ross Bilbrey wrote in his dissenting opinion. Bilbrey created a chart spelling out that under the previous case law, carriers had to keep up with just a few key dates, but with the new rules, as many as six timeframes must be considered.
“Here we have chosen to reassess a precedent and have come to the conclusion that it is clearly erroneous,” the en banc opinion notes, acknowledging that it is overturning decades of court rulings and practice. “‘Two clocks’ is now the law,” defense attorney Kagan wrote in a recent blog post. “It will forever change the way we calculate the passage of time and entitlement in workers’ compensation claims and cases-until and unless the Legislature later says otherwise.”
The ruling affects Florida’s workers’ compensation requirements, which mandate coverage for construction employers with one or more employees, non-construction employers with four or more employees, and agricultural employers with six or more regular employees or twelve or more seasonal workers working more than 30 days in a season. Under Florida Statute 440.107, employers who fail to carry required workers’ compensation insurance face stop-work orders and financial penalties of $1,000 per day or twice the premium they would have paid during non-compliance.
The decision will require employers and insurers to navigate what attorneys describe as a complicated limitations approach requiring multiple timers, essentially extending the two-year statute of limitations farther into the future for many claims involving ongoing medical treatment or benefit payments.