By David Sommer
The Tampa Tribune
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. — A sheriff’s deputy whose workers’ compensation claim was denied by a judge who questioned his veracity won reinstatement to the Pasco payroll Wednesday.
Sheriff Bob White settled a lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of Steven Sickles in which the deputy accused the sheriff of effectively firing him by placing him on unpaid suspension two days after the judge issued her ruling.
Sickles will receive back pay and remain on paid leave while the sheriff’s office completes its investigation into the workers’ compensation case, Sickles’ attorney, Kerry O’Connor, said.
Sheriff’s office spokesman Kevin Doll confirmed that the lawsuit had been settled to Sickles’ satisfaction.
The lawsuit, in the form of an emergency petition for an injunction, initially was denied by Pasco Circuit Judge Stanley R. Mills on Tuesday. Mills ruled that he would not order White to put Sickles on paid leave, as the lawsuit requested, without holding an adversarial hearing on the issue.
O’Connor, who filed the lawsuit on Sickles’ behalf, said the point of the complaint against White was that his personnel department did not follow a Florida law popularly known as the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights.
Under the law, Sickles must first be notified in writing that he is the target of an internal investigation before he can be placed on either paid or unpaid leave, O’Connor wrote in court documents.
Also, only White, and not his subordinates, can take such an action, she wrote.
By placing Sickles on unpaid leave as of May 9, the sheriff’s office “caused a ‘de facto’ termination of his employment,” O’Connor argued.
Doll said it is against White’s policies to comment on lawsuits or ongoing internal affairs investigations.
In a letter sent to White prior to the lawsuit’s filing, O’Connor said the sheriff’s office acted improperly even if Sickles is facing potential criminal charges.
“The proper statutory procedure ... was to provide Deputy Sickles with a Notice of Investigation ... whether or not you were awaiting a filing decision from the Office of the State Attorney,” the letter states.
O’Connor said she believes prosecutors have decided not to charge her client with a crime related to his workers’ compensation claim. Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett, who handles such matters, did not reply to telephone inquiries Wednesday.
In her May 21 letter sent to the sheriff’s office in advance of the lawsuit, O’Connor said she thought Sickles was placed on unpaid leave on May 9 because of “some concern regarding the contents of Judge Lauren L. Hafner’s opinion.”
That May 7 ruling stated that the evidence showed Sickles knowingly changed his version of what happened following a January 2006 incident in which he was injured by a suspect who resisted arrest.
Hafner said two of three doctors believed Sickles reinjured his back at the same spot he had been operated on following a 1999 workers’ compensation claim.
Sickles says his neck was injured in 2006, the judge said, because he was paid a significantly smaller amount of money, based on his 1999 salary, while out on disability for all of 2007.
“Claimant’s awareness that indemnity payments would be much greater if attributed to the 2006 accident rather than the 1999 one is evidence that the statements were made with the intention of obtaining workers’ compensation benefits,” Hafner wrote, concluding that Sickles’ statements violated the law.
O’Connor, who did not represent Sickles in the workers’ comp case, said one of three doctors backed her client’s version of events, and that the judge ruled on the evidence as she saw it.
“People say where things hurt” and not where an injury might be located, she said. “It doesn’t mean my client did anything wrong.”
Copyright 2008 The Tampa Tribune