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Hurt worker gets paid

After months of wrangling, a $150,000 settlement comes through.

By ROBIN STEIN
Published November 15, 2006

After a three-story fall down a Tarpon Springs elevator shaft shattered his leg, his hip and his hopes, Alfonso Escobar spent nine long months on lawn chairs and a urine-stained mattress, penniless, worrying how he would pay mounting medical bills.

Now Escobar, a Tampa resident, has left temporarily to visit his family in Mexico with his medical bills paid and more than $112,000 in his pocket.

Escobar had all but given up on his dream to visit his home again after the accident. The settlement made it possible.

The stormy morning in February was the 49-year-old drywall installer's first day on the Sunset Bay job site, a cluster of luxury townhouses rising from a spit of Tarpon Springs overlooking the Gulf.

A Mexican national who has been a legal U.S. resident since 1998, Escobar had been on the site for less than an hour when he took a fateful step into an unguarded elevator shaft. The 22-foot plunge was both physically and mentally devastating.

It required five surgeries that were followed by two evictions that forced Escobar to move into a friend's garage to recuperate.

The days crept by, his pain unrelenting and his nerves increasingly frayed. As his body slowly healed, the collection of medical bills neatly folded in a stained satchel bulged - portending a dreary financial future.

"He'd have been in bankruptcy," said Escobar's attorney, John P. Brooks. "Fortunately he had friends, and they were able to put him up and take care of him with no money."

In September, Escobar was ambling around without crutches and itching to return to work. He was eager to begin paying his debts and the $500 monthly payments to his family, whom he had not seen in more than a decade.

Brooks said Escobar is back home now, with his wife and a teenage daughter in Mante, Tamaulipas, Mexico - at least for a visit.

The $150,000 insurance settlement he signed last month marked an abrupt reversal in a multifaceted legal battle that Brooks said might easily have dragged on for years.

In theory, the workers' compensation system provides no-fault insurance coverage for the more than 80,000 Floridians hurt on the job each year. The arrangement represents a bargain forged nearly a century ago that provides workers with a quick means to recover medical expenses and a percentage of lost wages after an accident on the job, and shields employers from expensive lawsuits.

But despite the promise of a faultless system, Escobar confronted a formidable burden of proof.

For weeks, neither the general contractor at Sunset Bay, Cantel Homes, nor the subcontractor, Security Drywall II, would acknowledge hiring him.

State insurance investigators are looking at Gary McQuiston of New Port Richey, owner of Security Drywall II. They are investigating whether he was operating without a workers' compensation policy, a second-degree felony that could bring fines and even a prison sentence upon conviction.

If the subcontractor has no coverage, the responsibility shifts to the general contractor, in this case Cantel Homes. But Cantel's insurer, St. Paul Travelers, initially balked at Escobar's claim, citing the lack of employment records.

Eventually, St. Paul Travelers agreed to cover Escobar's medical expenses but refused to pay Escobar any lost wages, arguing that his pay arrangement of $100 per day did not qualify as "wages" under Florida law.

"Wages," according to a state statute, "includes only the wages earned and reported for federal income tax purposes." Since the fall occurred during Escobar's first morning on the job, he had been paid nothing.

Under this definition, Escobar's wage would be zero, said Peter H. Dubbeld, the attorney representing, St. Paul Travelers.

Neither Dubbeld nor representatives of Security Drywall II could be reached for comment.

But after a judge agreed to hold an emergency hearing on the issue in September, Cantel and St. Paul Travelers offered Escobar a significant settlement.

The news came as a pleasant surprise to Escobar, who suspected he had overstayed his welcome.

"They ain't saying nothing to me yet, but I hope they don't say anything about me when I not here," he said.

Brooks said Escobar plans to return to Tampa in a month or two.

"I don't think he can go back to hanging drywall, but with Alfonso, you never know," he said.

[Last modified November 14, 2006, 23:14:07]