Workers' compensation defense.

Overview

Florida's workers' compensation system is meant to be self-executing. In practice, a small share of claims consume most of the cost, and they do it in predictable ways: a compensability question that never got answered, a major contributing cause opinion nobody pinned down, an average weekly wage calculated on incomplete records, or medical care that expanded because no one challenged it early.

This practice is built around catching those things while they are still cheap to catch. Every file gets the same treatment — the facts established, the medical understood, the defenses identified and preserved — whether it resolves at mediation or goes to final hearing.

What clients bring to us

• Petitions for benefits requiring an answer and a defense strategy
• Compensability disputes, including idiopathic, pre-existing condition, and major contributing cause issues
• Misrepresentation and fraud defenses under section 440.09(4) and 440.105
• Average weekly wage and indemnity rate disputes
• Authorization, one-time change, and independent medical examination disputes
• Permanent total disability claims and long-tail medical exposure
• Employer/employee status, statutory employer, and PEO coverage questions
• Attorney's fee and cost claims
• Settlement structuring and washout negotiations

How Laur Law approaches these matters

The medical drives the case

Most disputed comp claims turn on a physician's opinion, not on a legal argument. The records get read closely and early — every note, not just the summary — because the sentence that decides the case is usually already in the file before anyone has looked for it.

Defenses are preserved, not discovered late

Misrepresentation, notice, statute of limitations, and major contributing cause defenses have to be identified and developed on a timeline. Raising them late is often the same as not raising them.

Resolution is a decision, not a default

Some claims should be settled quickly and some should not be settled at all. You get a recommendation with the reasoning behind it, so the decision is yours to make with real information.

What to expect

• Same business day — receipt confirmed, deadlines calendared, urgent items flagged
• First 30 days — written evaluation with exposure range, viable defenses, and recommended path
• Throughout — reporting in your format, on your schedule, in plain language
• Before any cost change — notice in advance, not on the invoice

Statewide coverage

Venue in a Florida workers' compensation case follows where the accident happened, not where counsel keeps an office. Laur Law appears in district offices across the state, which means a carrier or PEO can assign a file once instead of retaining and coordinating separate local counsel for each region.

Confirm the current list of OJCC district offices at jcc.state.fl.us — the office structure was consolidated in recent years.

Questions we get