Touby, Chait & Sicking, PL

Where the work is focused

This is a workers' compensation firm based in Coral Gables, and that single focus shapes the whole of its site. The firm represents employees who are hurt on the job. It handles the initial claim, the medical benefits that follow, and the appeals that come when a claim is denied. The stated service area is Miami and the rest of Florida.

Workers' compensation is its own corner of the law, with benefits, deadlines, and the forum all set by state statute. The rules for who qualifies, what treatment is covered, and how long payments last all come from that statute, so the details matter early. A firm that works only here builds its routine around that system, and this one presents itself that way throughout.

The firm's positioning is easy to place. It works for injured employees, in Miami and across Florida, and it takes the claim from filing onward. A worker looking for help with a job injury can tell within a page that workers' compensation is the whole of the firm's work.

The kinds of claims the site names

Construction accidents, Heart/Lung Bill claims, and medical benefits are the categories the site calls out, along with a broader heading it labels types of work injuries. In my opinion, that list reads as depth inside one field.

Construction sites produce some of the more serious work injuries in Florida, such as falls, struck-by incidents, and equipment failures. Claims from these sites can involve more than one employer on the same job, which complicates who is responsible for benefits. A firm that names construction work signals that it takes on these layered cases.

The Heart/Lung Bill reference points to a specific part of Florida law for first responders. Under that statute, certain conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or tuberculosis in qualifying firefighters and police officers are presumed to be job related. The presumption changes where a claim starts. These cases still turn on medical records and the facts of a person's service.

Denied claims and how appeals work

Denied benefits are one of the areas the firm names, and they are among the harder parts of this field. Insurers control much of the early decision-making, and a denial can arrive even when the injury itself is clear. A denial can rest on whether an injury counts as work related, on the choice of treating doctor, or on how long benefits should continue. Each of these turns on evidence the worker has to gather and present.

When a claim is denied in Florida, the next step is a petition for benefits filed with the state's Office of the Judges of Compensation Claims. Mediation usually comes before any hearing. If the matter does not settle, a Judge of Compensation Claims hears it and issues a ruling, and an adverse ruling can go up to the First District Court of Appeal. A firm that handles appeals works across all of these stages.

Medical benefits sit at the centre of many of these disputes. A worker may need approval for a specific treatment, a referral to another physician, or continued care that an insurer wants to cut off. Each of these can become its own fight inside the larger claim, and a firm that lists medical benefits as a focus is signalling that it handles them directly.

How the litigation team is built

Two attorneys lead the litigation: Mark Touby and Sylvia Mora. Both work only on workers' compensation cases, and both are based in Miami. The firm describes them as co-leads who share that work.

Touby and Mora each hold board certification from The Florida Bar in workers' compensation. That credential carries weight in this field. The Florida Bar grants it to lawyers who meet set requirements in experience, pass a written examination, and clear peer review, and only a minority of attorneys in any given area hold it. Touby's own page says he has spent his career representing injured workers.

Having both lead litigators certified in the same field is a point in the firm's favour. It means the two people steering cases have each met an outside standard in the exact area they work. For a client, that is easier to check than a general claim of experience.

The governmental affairs side

Richard Chait heads a governmental affairs department, which is an unusual thing to find inside a single-office claims firm. The department is separate from the litigation side, and it gives the firm a footing in the policy end of the same subject. His work concerns the Florida workers' compensation system as a whole. The site credits him with knowledge in both the law and governmental affairs.

Workers' compensation in Florida runs on statutes and agency rules that shift over time. A department aimed at that level tends to follow proposed legislation, changes to benefit formulas, and the procedures that decide how claims move. As a reviewer, I read this as the firm keeping track of the rules while it also litigates individual claims under them.

For an injured worker, the practical effect is indirect but real. A firm that reads and responds to changes in the system knows the current rules before it walks into a hearing. That knowledge feeds back into how the same attorneys handle the claims in front of them.

Background, language and reach

The firm was founded in 2014. It states that its attorneys hold more than 90 years of combined legal experience. The two facts sit together in a clear way: a young firm as an entity that carries lawyers with long individual records behind it. For someone comparing firms, a stated total of that size points to attorneys who have handled many cases before, even where the firm's own name is newer.

The site also names Richard Sicking, now retired, as part of the firm's background in Florida workers' compensation law. His name stays on the door while Touby and Mora carry the current caseload. The result is a firm with roots that reach back before its 2014 filing.

The firm publishes a Spanish-language version of its site across its pages, which is a practical detail in a county where many residents speak Spanish at home. Its clients are injured employees, which puts the firm on the workers' side of the compensation table. The office sits in Coral Gables, and its cases cover Miami and the whole of Florida.