Provision of Benefits Tolls Statute of Limitations, allowing Fla. Teacher’s PFB to Advance

Case File

Because the term "toll" meant to "suspend, stop temporarily, or abate the limitations period," rather than extend a discrete one-year period to file additional claims, a Florida teacher's receipt of benefits stopped the clock long enough for her to file a PFB. Simply Research subscribers have access to the full text of the decision.

Case

Estes v. Palm Beach County Sch. Dist., No. 1D2025-0079 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 03/23/26)

What Happened?

A teacher for a Florida school district fell on the job, sustaining an accidental injury that was accepted as compensable by the employer/carrier. The E/C paid workers' compensation medical and indemnity benefits to the teacher for about 16 months. After, the E/C filed a Notice of Denial, signaling its intention to deny additional future medical treatments or benefits based on allegations that the accident was not the major contributing cause of her need for such treatments or benefits.

The teacher filed a petition benefits, seeking a one-time change in orthopedists and other benefits. The E/C denied her claims, contending that the statute of limitations barred them all.

The Judge of Compensation Claims found that the applicable two-year statute of limitations had lapsed after having never been suspended or abated, and issued a Final Order that dismissed with prejudice the teacher's entire PFB.

The teacher appealed to court, which took up the issue of whether the E/C's provision of workers' compensation treatment or benefits suspended the running of the two-year statute of limitations. According to the teacher, her receipt of injury-related benefits suspended the two-year limitations clock until one year after she received the last benefits. The E/C urged that the two-year statutory limitations period didn't stop running after the date of the accident.

Rule of Law

After 1994, Florida law has provided:

(1) All employee petitions for benefits shall be barred unless the petition is filed within two years after the date on which the employee knew or should have known that the injury or death arose out of work performed in the course and scope of employment.

(2) Payment of any indemnity benefit or the furnishing of remedial treatment, care, or attendance pursuant to either a notice of injury or a petition for benefits shall toll the limitations period set forth above for one year from the date of such payment. This tolling period does not apply to the issues of compensability, date of maximum medical improvement, or permanent impairment.

(3) The filing of a petition for benefits does not toll the limitations period unless it meets the specificity requirements of Section 440.192.

What the Court Said

After defining "toll" as meaning "suspend," "stop temporarily," or "abate," the court explained that after an employee knows or should have know of a qualifying workplace injury, the two-year limitations-period clock begins to run. But then, if an E/C provides benefits after the injury, the limitations-period clock is stopped while the one-year tolling clock begins running and restarts after every subsequent provision of a benefit. The limitations-period clock restarts again one year after the provision of the last benefit.

As applied to the worker's case, the court explained that the teacher received "many workers' compensation benefits" for injuries starting within two days of her workplace accident in 2021 for a period extending through January 2023.

"As a result, the one-year tolling clock promptly stopped the running of the two-year limitations-period clock after the accident until one year after [the teacher] received the last of these benefits -- through at least January 2024," the court wrote. "And so when [the teacher] filed her PFB in June 2024 ... she was only about six months into the running of the two-year limitations-period clock."

Thus, the date of the PFB fell within the running of the two-year limitations-period clock, which would not have expired until January 2026.

Verdict: The court set aside and remanded the JCC's decision.

Takeaway

When it comes to the statute of limitations on workers' compensation claims in Florida, parties must manage two important statutory clocks that run separately: (1) the limitations period clock; and (2) the tolling clock.

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