Off-site Archive

  July 29, 2019 FLORIDA LEADING THE WAR ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING By David Langham Back in 2014, I wrote  Where did it Come From, Where is it Going, and How Huge is it ? It was published twice, but neither publication is available online at this time. The article addressed the sheer volume of workers’ compensation in America. As a matter of fact, workers’ compensation has begun to celebrate centennials in various states; in its modern American form it is reasonably recent, although the concept of compensating for injury literally dates back thousands of years, perhaps to 2050 B.C. according to some.   The “How Huge is it” question came from a quote written by Judge Mills of the Florida First District Court of Appeal, who said:   “Workers' compensation is a very important field of the law, if not the most important. It touches more lives than any other field of the law. It involves the payments of huge sums of money. The welfare of human beings, the success of business, an...

  July 01, 2019 SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF EMPLOYABILITY By: Judge David Langham In the law, we have all learned that defendants “take the plaintiff as we find him” or “her.” This is a “rule” or legal maxim that essentially holds that there are people that are perhaps more susceptible to injury than others, based upon our physical frailty, or even personality. What might be an inconvenience to one might be a much more serious injury to another.  Essentially, we all react to our environment and life events, physically and emotionally, in our own personal manner. In personal injury litigation, this has been referred to as the “ eggshell plaintiff ” maxim (if a particular plaintiff has a frailty, such as a thin skull, is more susceptible to injury, “the defendant is still liable for all the damages that occur”).  This maxim is applied in injury cases, both civil and criminal. As the Florida Supreme Court noted many years ago, “it is well settled in Florida that a criminal t...