The Austin Court of Appeals has upheld a trial court order requiring the employee in a workers’ compensation case to pay his lawyer’s fees out his recovery of certain supplemental income benefits.
Law Offices of Miller & Bicklein, PC and Daniel Miramontes v. Ace American Insurance Company, (No. 03-25-00215-CV; September 4, 2025) arose from a dispute between a workers’ compensation claimant and his employer’s insurer. In January 2011, Daniel Miramontes suffered a workplace injury that fulfilled the requirements for supplemental income benefits, for which he had to establish his eligibility for the benefits with the insurance carrier each quarter. The parties, however, disagreed about that eligibility for four quarters in 2016 and 2017. An administrative-law judge for the Division of Workers’ Compensation concluded that Miramontes shouldn’t receive SIBs for those four quarters, and an appeals panel affirmed. Miramontes then sought judicial review. A jury found for him and awarded the benefits. This final judgment further awarded Miramontes’s attorneys $80,215.42 in attorney’s fees, but it did not tax the attorney’s fees and costs to the carrier. Neither party appealed the final judgment.
The following August, Miramontes and his lawyers filed a claim with the DWC that the carrier should pay the attorney’s fees instead of Miramontes. The DWC concluded in its final administrative decision that it had no jurisdiction over the attorney’s fee award since the district court had determined it. An appeals panel affirmed. Shortly thereafter, Miramontes and the lawyers again sought judicial review. The carrier filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that the DWC lacked jurisdiction to review the attorney’s fees award because Miramontes did not appeal the final judgment back in December 2022. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the lawsuit, leading to this appeal.
In an opinion by Justice Theofanis, the court of appeals affirmed. Miramontes and his lawyers argued that Miramontes had to get a final decision about his eligibility for SIBs from the district court before he could “return to the Division of Workers’ Compensation to make an administrative claim for attorney’s fees in the first instance.” As the court observed, the general rule in workers’ compensation cases is that attorney’s fees are paid out of the claimant’s recovery. Here Plaintiffs claimed that § 408.147(c), which requires the carrier to pay the claimant’s attorney’s fees if it disputes the commissioner’s determination that an employee is entitled to SIBs or the amount of SIBs due, created an exception to the rule. As the court pointed out, however, the statute didn’t apply in this case because the insurer didn’t dispute the administrative determination that Miramontes was entitled to the benefits nor the amount of the benefits. On the flip side, the statute is “equally clear and unambiguous that attorney’s fees are not recoverable when the employee disputes an initial Commission finding that the employee is not entitled to [SIBs].”
The court went on to review the substantial case authority holding that in SIB cases, “the attorney’s fees issue may be decided at the district court’s judicial review level, as it was here” (citations omitted). Because Miramontes did not appeal the district court’s judgment, which included the court’s attorney’s fees determination, the judgment became final. The district court decided correctly that DWC lacked jurisdiction to alter the court’s attorney’s fees award.
TCJL Intern Dilara Muslu researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
