Coyote Blog

The workers compensation program in Florida is broken. In a previous post, I discussed why, almost no matter how broken it is, workers comp is still better than an alternate world without it. Sometimes, though, Florida tests me on this.

If you don't know, Florida is one of a couple of states (California and New York are others) that national carriers of workers comp insurance avoid because it is such a mess. Fraud is high, costs are high, benefits are low.

I found a new reason to dislike Florida workers comp today. Apparently, there are lawyers out there in Florida advertising that a worker will never get their fair shake out of the insurer unless they hire a lawyer. We have an ex-employee who was injured in a vehicle accident while at work. A claim was filed, and the workers comp system is processing the claim (though a bit delayed due to 4, count them 4 hurricanes to hit Florida in one month). So, for some reason, the employee has hired a lawyer. I do not know what he will get with the lawyer, but this is an awful trend, because the only redeeming feature of the workers comp system is that it keeps lawyers and their costs out of it. I have no idea how the lawyer gets compensated, but I am sure at some point, I will be paying his fees one way or the other. If the employee is paying for him directly, I really feel bad for the employee, because I don't know what value he is getting for his money.

So, the lawyer, putting in a good 15 seconds of work (which he probably bills an hour or two for) pulls a xeroxed set of discovery questions and sends them to me. There are thirty four questions, all with things I have to look up or xerox and send to him. None of them are tailored to this case, so most will end up being irrelevent and all my info gathering a waste of time. So, not only is there the cost of the attorney's fees adding to the process, but the externalities of the cost of my and my employees' time to feed him with data. All to probably get the same recovery for the patient the system would have given him without intervention.

This is what I really dislike about the law profession nowadays. They are the only people except for the government who can arbitrarily demand a ton of my time calling up data that no one will ever look at. Other people try this - for example, some vendors have sent me huge credit applications that would take weeks to complete - but in their case I can say "no" and tell them if they insist, they don't get my business. Lawyers and the government, though, can demand arbitrarily intrusive and time-consuming document collection and there is not a thing I can do about it.