City of Miami v. Bell

606 So. 2d 1183, 1992 Fla. App. LEXIS 9996, 1992 WL 222006
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedSeptember 16, 1992
Docket91-1878
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 606 So. 2d 1183 (City of Miami v. Bell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Miami v. Bell, 606 So. 2d 1183, 1992 Fla. App. LEXIS 9996, 1992 WL 222006 (Fla. Ct. App. 1992).

Opinion

606 So.2d 1183 (1992)

CITY OF MIAMI, Appellant,
v.
Ronald V. BELL, Appellee.

No. 91-1878.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

September 16, 1992.

A. Quinn Jones, III, City Atty. and Ramon Irizarri and Kathryn S. Pecko, Asst. City Attys., Miami, for appellant.

Richard A. Sicking, Miami, for appellee.

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

ZEHMER, Judge.

Upon consideration of the City's motion for rehearing, the original opinion filed in this case is withdrawn and the following opinion is substituted therefor. In light of the revisions in this substituted opinion, the motion for rehearing is denied.

This is another of the many workers' compensation appeals by the City of Miami *1184 arising out of the supreme court's decision in Barragan v. City of Miami, 545 So.2d 252 (Fla. 1989). This appeal questions the retroactive application of that decision, whether the claim for past benefits offset in violation of state law is barred by the doctrine of res judicata, whether the award of a 10% penalty is error, and in what manner the Barragan offset of combined workers' compensation and disability pension benefits in excess of claimant's average monthly wage is to be accomplished. Finding no error in any of these respects, we affirm the appealed order.

In January 1985, Ronald Bell, a firefighter employed by the City, was injured in a compensable accident. After a period of temporary disability, he began drawing permanent total disability (PTD) compensation benefits on September 24, 1987, the same date that his service-connected disability retirement pension benefits also became effective. From that date until August 1, 1989, the City offset Bell's PTD benefits in the amount of $1,330.03 per month against his disability retirement monthly pension benefit of $2,594.83 on the authority of the City of Miami ordinance held invalid in Barragan.[1] As a result, the maximum combined benefits paid to Bell during that period never exceeded his monthly pension amount and, of course, never reached his average weekly wage of $809.67 ($3481.58 monthly). Effective August 1, 1989, shortly after the supreme court had denied rehearing in its Barragan decision on July 14, 1989, the City ceased taking this offset and began paying Bell his full PTD benefits of $1,320.10 plus full pension benefits of $2,594.83 monthly. The City did not give retroactive effect to the Barragan decision and thus did not pay any past offset benefits.

On July 24, 1989, Bell filed a claim for the withheld benefits under the Barragan decision. On August 14, 1989, the City filed its notice to controvert[2] Bell's recently filed claim on the ground that claimant had been paid all benefits due. In view of the City's action terminating the offset as of August 1, 1989, its notice to controvert must be construed as implicitly rejecting any retroactive application of the Barragan decision. After the hearing, the judge of compensation claims ordered the City to pay the full amount of past benefits due under the Barragan decision from September 24, 1987, through August 1, 1989, and awarded a 10% penalty pursuant to section 440.20, Florida Statutes (1985), based on the City's failure to controvert the claim within the 10-day period specified in subparagraph (6) of that section. The order recognized that the City could limit combined benefits to the amount of claimant's average weekly wage pursuant to the Barragan decision, resulting in a deduction of $433.35 from total monthly benefits of $3914.93, but made no provision in the order for effectuating this offset. The judge rejected the City's contention that Bell's claim was barred under the doctrine of res judicata by reason of a previously filed claim and award in 1988 for medical benefits.[3]

The City raises four points on this appeal. After hearing lengthy oral arguments by the parties and giving this case careful consideration, we affirm the order in all respects for the reasons now set forth.

I.

The City's first point contends that the order errs in applying the supreme court's Barragan decision retroactively. The City argues that Barragan overruled numerous decisions of Florida intermediate appellate *1185 courts upholding the offset under the Miami ordinance after the repeal of section 440.09(4) in 1973, and that the City had detrimentally relied on these decisions during the years it had taken the offsets pursuant to the ordinance invalidated by the supreme court's "surprise" decision holding that the ordinance "flies in the face of state law." Retrospective application of Barragan, the City argues, will, by judicial construction, abridge and impair the rights, positions and courses of action validated by the appellate courts of this state until Barragan was decided by the supreme court. Further, the City argues, Barragan should be applied prospectively, and not retrospectively, to avoid "inequitable results" because otherwise Bell and other similarly situated claimants will receive monies that they had no expectation they were legally entitled to receive and that they did not attempt to secure until after the supreme court "dropped" the Barragan bomb.

We can readily understand that the Barragan decision has generated something of a financial crisis for the City, and we are not entirely unsympathetic to the City's impassioned plea for relief. However, we find no valid legal basis to support the City's arguments against the retroactive application of the Barragan decision, this court having previously decided this point to the contrary in City of Miami v. Burnett, 596 So.2d 478 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992). In that case we followed our decision in City of Daytona Beach v. Amsel, 585 So.2d 1044 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991), which held that Barragan is to be retroactively applied to compensable injuries occurring after the July 1, 1973, repeal of section 440.09(4).[4]

II.

The City's second point contends that it was error to rule that Bell's claim for the offset was not barred as being mature when the earlier claim for medical benefits was filed in 1988. The City points out that section 440.09(4), which had authorized the offset, was repealed in 1973, so that Bell's claim for past monies withheld pursuant to the City's offset was mature at the time of the 1988 proceeding on Bell's claim for medical benefits and thus should have been asserted in the claim for medical benefits to avoid an improper "splitting" of claims. Since the offset claim was not filed at that time, the City argues, it is now barred by the doctrine of res judicata.

There is no merit in this argument. In Wagner v. Baron, 64 So.2d 267 (Fla. 1953), the supreme court held:

The cases are legion which hold that res judicata is not a defense in a subsequent action where the law under which the first judgment was obtained is different than that applicable to the second action, or there has been an intervening decision, or a change in the law between the first and second judgment, creating an altered situation. [Citations omitted.]
"The doctrine of res judicata as to the finality of the judgment and the doctrine of law of the case as to the binding effect of interlocutory orders in litigation are rules of convenience `designed to prevent repetitious law suits over matters which have once been decided and which have remained substantially static, factually and legally (and must give way where there has been a change in the fundamental controlling legal principles).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
606 So. 2d 1183, 1992 Fla. App. LEXIS 9996, 1992 WL 222006, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-miami-v-bell-fladistctapp-1992.