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I am deeply grateful to the Florida Legislature for cracking down on "catastrophic" injuries in workers' compensation cases.
No longer can a goof-off worker in Florida lose a mere eye, or a lone leg, hand, arm or foot, and still have a "catastrophic" injury for disability purposes.
No. The House and the Senate have voted for a "reform" bill that says that a Florida worker must lose BOTH eyes, or BOTH arms, or BOTH legs, or BOTH feet.
Don't worry. There is still some flexibility. An employee also is permitted to lose any two different body parts from the above list - say, one arm and one eye, or one leg and one hand, and still make the grade.
Mix and match, as it were.
Now, you might ask:
What about spinal cord injuries? What about brain damage?
And indeed, there were some bleeding-heart liberals in the Senate who tried to include those injuries under "catastrophic."
But the Senate, like the House before it, stuck to its principles and said no. Spinal injuries and brain damage are not catastrophic.
(Not even for legislators.)
Another part of this "reform" is what I like to call the Homicidal Boss Rule.
Under the House's version, you could no longer sue your boss in civil court for sending you into a dangerous or life-threatening situation unless you proved that your boss intended to hurt or kill you.
Merely sending you "knowingly" into danger would not be enough.
That means a boss would practically have to be guilty of first-degree murder or attempted murder to be sued. Even a boss convicted of the manslaughter of an employee would still be immune!
CORPORATE LAWYER: Please tell the court, Mr. Whiplash, whether you intended any harm to your employee Mr. Johnson when you ordered him to lie down in front of an oncoming steamroller.
BOSS: Absolutely none, sir. I had no idea of what would happen.
JUDGE: Case dismissed! Mr. Johnson is ordered to pay Mr. Whiplash's legal bills.
JOHNSON: Mpmph hgrrg!
This was too ridiculous even for the Senate, and it is the only part of the House bill that the Senate has rejected. But the Senate might still be forced to cave in.
Let's see, what else?
Being experts, the House and Senate also declared that no worker requires more than three months of psychiatric care following a trauma. If, for example, a convenience store clerk is raped at knifepoint, she will be working under a deadline to Just Get Over It.
This whole bill has been served up by big business and insurance. It is based on a bunch of cooked-up statistics and the claim that if the Legislature passes this bill, insurance rates will drop by more than 10 percent.
Riiiiight. In a pig's eye, assuming the pig didn't have to give both eyes up.
What kills me is that your member of the House or Senate is probably going to win re-election anyway.
Your representatives will come home and will have the benefit of campaign money, given to his or her party.
That money will come from telephone companies (who got a bill raising your local rates) -
And insurance companies (who got the workers' comp bill written) -
And sugar companies (who got the Legislature to rewrite the Everglades cleanup) -
And big strip-mall owners like Publix (who got a law passed saying neighbors can't sue when dry-cleaning chemicals leak into the ground) -
And with that money, legislators will buy billboards that will sport cheerful slogans such as: "Fighting For You!"
Both eyes?
Both arms?
Both legs?
Both feet?
"Look at Captain Ahab," the insurance lobbyists probably told the Legislature. "He got around just fine with a peg leg, didn't he?
"And just think about how much money the one-eyed man is going to save in eyeglass lenses."
Fighting for you.