Has the expanding compensability of heart attacks in Florida put a cork in Victor Wine?

• Author: Manie, Andrew J.
• Position: Workers' Compensation Law

In 2014, heart disease accounted for 24 percent of deaths in Florida. (1) In 1961, Florida courts first addressed the compensability of heart attacks occurring at work in Victor Wine & Liquor, Inc. v. Beasley, 141 So. 2d 581 (Fla. 1961). (2) Before Victor Wine, in order for a claimant to receive compensation or benefits under the workers' compensation system, the claimant had to prove that the occurrence of an accidental injury or death arising out of work performed was in the course and scope of employment. (3) Thus, when Victor Wine was decided, there was no statutory test to use as a threshold for establishing industrial causation. (4) The test set forth in Victor Wine was originally established to require at least some industrial causation where a claimant experienced a heart attack while performing his or her work duties when he or she suffered from preexisting heart disease. (5)

In 1993, the Florida Legislature amended F.S. [section] 440.02(32) and, in 2003, amended F.S. [section] 440.09(1). (6) These amendments created a statutory test whereby claimants were required to show that the major contributing cause of an injury was industrial and to make this showing by medical evidence in order to prove compensability. (7) Despite these amendments addressing compensability of industrial injuries, the courts until recently had yet to address whether the amendments superseded Victor Wine for dates of accidents occurring after October 1, 2003, thereby creating a question of whether Victor Wine was still applicable.

In 1961, the Florida Supreme Court in Victor Wine stated:

[W]hen disabling heart attacks are involved and where such heart conditions are precipitated by work-connected exertion affecting a pre-existing non-disabling heart disease, said injuries are compensable only if the employee was at the time subject to unusual strain or over-exertion not routine to the type of work he was accustomed to performing. (8)

In 1978, the Florida Supreme Court extended the Victor Wine test to "other failures of the general cardiovascular system." (9) In Richard E. Mosca & Co., Inc. v. Mosca, 362 So. 2d 1340, 1342 (Fla. 1978), Mosca was under a "great deal of stress and strain and had been working long hours." At an important sales meeting, he "suffered a rupture of a congenital cerebral aneurysm." (10) The court concluded that Mosca "failed to meet the test of Victor Wine because there is no evidence to show that the ruptured aneurysm was caused by...