Fla. City Council Approves $150k Settlement for 30-year Employee Hurt on Job

Safety at Work

Ocala, FL (WorkersCompensation.com) – The Ocala City Council in Ocala, Fla., voted unanimously this week accept the mediated settlement for a workers’ compensation claim by a longtime city employee.

The “washout” agreement settles all claims for Thomas Casey, 61, who has worked for the city since August of 1994. The claim was mediated in early March. 

Casey filed a workers’ compensation claim for work-related injuries he sustained on Nov. 6, 2024. Officials said he was attempting to remove a manhole cover when he injured his back. According to a city staff memo, the incident caused immediate lower back pain that escalated into radiating discomfort, tightening and stiffness for Casey. Following the injury, medical evaluations also suggested that Casey’s neck, right arm, and shoulder problems may also be related to the accident.

City staff had recommended approval of the settlement to mitigate significant financial exposure. Prior to the settlement agreement, a judge had ordered a surgical procedure for Casey estimated at $70,000, with post-op treatment and pain management expected to reach $110,000.

Additionally, the city faced added costs for attorney’s fees and litigation estimated at between $65,000 and $75,000. Staff said the mediated $150,000 resolution was a cost-effective solution and that the agreement avoided the risk of adverse judgements or further legal exposure.

As part of the settlement, Casey is required to retire from his position with the city, sign a general release and agree to never reapply to the city for a job. The agreement ends all medical and indemnity benefits related to the 2024 claim, but it protects any other vested benefits Casey earned during his 30-year career. The settlement also requires all of the pending petitions for benefits and a pending appeal of a judge’s order from Nov. 2025 to be dismissed. The payment will be drawn from the city's self-insurance Workers’ Compensation fund.

The settlement will pay Casey $150,000, but it is inclusive of all attorney fees and other costs. Of that, Casey is expected to receive $107,500, while his attorney will receive their fees of $37,500 as well as up to $5,000 for litigation expenses.

A recent study by Cornell University’s ILR School’s Scheinman Institute found that unlike popular belief that arbitrated and mediated settlements are stacked against employees, when employees win in arbitration cases, they generally receive  settlements similar to court outcomes.

"These findings challenge the idea that employment arbitration is fundamentally unfair to workers. For many people, arbitration provides the only practical path to justice – allowing workers to bring claims they could not afford to pursue in court, delivering outcomes that are often the same as those produced through litigation," researchers said. "At the same time, the research identifies a real concern: arbitrators are less likely to award certain types of damages that the law already allows. According to the researchers, this is not a reason to eliminate employment arbitration, but it is a reason to improve it through clearer rules, and better arbitrator and advocate training."

The research found that workers in arbitration and in courts tend to receive similar compensation for their labor disputes, and found no evidence that arbitration routinely underpays workers. As mandatory employment arbitration and mediation grows across the country – up from 2 percent in 1992 to nearly 25 percent of the workforce by the early 2000s, the findings show that employee win rates are approximately 21.4 percent lower in arbitration than in federal court litigation. More than 60 million workers were covered by arbitration and mediation in 2017.

According to Steven Kokulak, when it comes to workers’ compensation, those types of alternative dispute resolution settlements can also be more beneficial to the employer than a long-drawn out court battle.

“Worker’s compensation can be a significant expense area for municipal employers and the taxpayers they represent. In addition to high premium rates, the individual claim expenses, litigation costs and extended periods of absence for injured workers rack up hefty price tags,” Kokulak wrote in SmartCities Dive. “Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) programs are an effective strategy for addressing the high costs of worker’s compensation. Simply put, ADR programs are structures designed to help injured workers and their employers quickly and fairly settle a claim outside of the traditional state workers compensation system.”

ADR upends the traditional workers’ compensation claim model, he said, which is designed to cost more money.

“In a traditional worker’s compensation system, most municipalities work with a third-party administrator (TPA) to manage worker’s compensation. Like insurance companies, those TPAs are predisposed to deny claims to try to save money,” he wrote. “In reality, all this does is kick the can down the road because, when the worker’s claim is denied, he or she will turn to litigation—leading to months of hearings, discovery, document exchange, etc., and most likely an award in the worker’s favor.”

ADR, he said, gives the employer the ability to self-administer their workers’ compensation programs, establish their own processes to produce better worker health outcomes, reduce the time to settle disputes and achieve significant savings.

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