by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
David Langham spent the better part of 11 years practicing workers’ compensation law in Jacksonville and today he’s the Deputy Chief Judge for workers’ compensation in Pensacola. It would make sense then that Langham was the chief presenter at Friday’s workers’ compensation seminar at City Hall.
The three-hour seminar was sponsored by the Jacksonville Bar Association’s Workers’ Compensation Committee and nearly 50 of the 80 or so workers’ compensation attorneys in the JBA attended. Langham was secured by Workers’ Compensation Chair Clay Harland of Cole Stone Stoudemire & Morgan.
Langham’s seminar touched on several aspects of workers’ compensation, but focused primarily on the new technology available to workers’ compensation attorneys.
“We are pushing e-filing and other electronic initiatives,” said Langham, who was appointed to the state bench by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2001 and reappointed last year. “We are moving from a paper world to an image world. We have just completed a program in Tallahassee that will allow lawyers to file their cases electronically. It will save time and money. It will save the State (of Florida) time and money. It’s more efficient and more effective.”
Harland said one the biggest issues facing workers’ compensation attorneys these days is the major change made in 2003 to the laws that govern workers’ compensation, specifically attorney’s fees and the cap on damages awarded to workers injured on the job.
“The value of the benefit dictates the fees,” said Harland, adding that the injured’s wages and medical costs also figure into the potential paid damages.
“The issue is: will injured workers continue to have effective representation?” said Harland. “”We also need to make sure the coverages are affordable for employers, too. It’s a balancing act right now.”
Langham, who is in Pensacola but is based out of Tallahassee, oversees 17 workers’ compensation offices in every judicial circuit in the state. Langham opened his own firm in 1997 in Ponte Vedra.