Area we serve · Hillsborough County
Car accident lawyer in Brandon
A community of 114,626 people with no city government of any kind
A crash in Brandon is a Hillsborough County claim, and the law that decides it is the same law as anywhere in Florida: the fourteen-day deadline for initial care, the injury threshold, two years to sue. What is specific here is that there is no local government to deal with. Hillsborough County has only three incorporated cities, and Brandon is not one of them, so there is no city police department, no city hall and nothing municipal at all — which changes who holds the report and, if a road itself is part of the problem, who is responsible for it. The statutes are set out on the Florida car accident page. What follows is about who you are actually dealing with.
01 What a Brandon crash actually looks like
An interstate on one side and a six-lane retail arterial through the middle
State Road 60, Brandon Boulevard, runs east to west through everything, and it is where most of these claims come from. It is a wide, signalized retail arterial, so the collisions it produces are turns across traffic into shopping entrances and rear-end collisions in the queues those turns create — moderate speed, high volume, and two accounts of who had the arrow.
Interstate 75 runs along the western side, and its interchange with State Road 60 is one of the busiest in the county. The transition between interstate speed and arterial speed happens in a very short distance, and the ramps back that up at predictable hours.
Lumsden Road, Bloomingdale Avenue and Causeway Boulevard carry the traffic that will not sit on Brandon Boulevard, through residential subdivisions, past schools, with far less capacity than the volume they actually take.
Brandon Regional Hospital is the nearest emergency department, but serious trauma in this county goes to Tampa General, which is the only Level I trauma center in Hillsborough. That means one crash can generate records in two systems, and both halves have to be gathered before anyone can value anything.
Brandon has more people than Plant City and Temple Terrace put together, and neither a mayor nor a police department.
02 The part nobody tells you about Brandon
Three cities in the whole county, and this is not one of them
The 2020 Census counted 114,626 people in Brandon. That is larger than the great majority of Florida cities, and Brandon is not a city. It is an unincorporated community in Hillsborough County, which has only three incorporated cities in it — Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City — and everything else, Brandon included, is unincorporated county.
So the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office writes the report. The agency says so itself: if an incident happened inside the city limits of Tampa, Temple Terrace or Plant City it is not unincorporated county, and if it happened anywhere else it is theirs. On Interstate 75 and on the state roads it may be the Florida Highway Patrol instead.
Where the road itself is part of the claim, the question is which government owns it. Interstate 75 and State Road 60 are state roads, maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation. Lumsden, Bloomingdale and Causeway are county roads. There is no city in between to be responsible for anything, which narrows the question but does not make it obvious.
Either way it runs under Fla. Stat. § 768.28: written notice of the claim within three years, six months for the agency to respond before suit, recovery capped at $200,000 for one person and $300,000 for the incident, and four years to file rather than the usual two. A claim against another driver has none of that.
A Brandon case is filed in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at the Hillsborough County Courthouse, 800 East Twiggs Street in downtown Tampa. Most injury claims never get there, because they resolve with the insurer before a suit is filed.
03 The roads
Where the claims actually come from
State Road 60, Brandon Boulevard, the six-lane retail spine, carrying the highest volumes and producing the most collisions.
Interstate 75, along the western side, with the State Road 60 interchange where interstate speed meets arterial speed in a very short distance.
Lumsden Road and Bloomingdale Avenue, the residential east-west pair taking the traffic that avoids Brandon Boulevard.
Causeway Boulevard, carrying commercial and commuter traffic northwest toward Tampa and the port approaches.
The shopping-center entrances along State Road 60, where turning movements across multiple lanes produce a steady run of claims all day.
04 What to do now
The things that can only be done in the first two weeks
A checklist rather than advice about any particular case, and following it commits you to nothing.
Get seen within fourteen days
Personal Injury Protection pays nothing at all if the first treatment falls outside fourteen days — not a reduced amount, nothing. It is the deadline that expires before most people have decided what to do.
Ask the Sheriff, not a city
Brandon is unincorporated, so the report is the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, or the Florida Highway Patrol on Interstate 75 and the state roads. There is no Brandon police department to ask.
Photograph the entrance or the intersection
On a retail arterial the question is almost always a turn: which signal, which lane, and what the turning driver could see past. That is a photograph from the driver’s eye level, and nobody takes it a month later.
Note whether you were taken to two hospitals
Brandon Regional is the local emergency department and serious trauma goes on to Tampa General. If that happened, the medical record is in two systems and both are needed before anyone can value the claim.
Record anything that suggests the road itself
A dead signal, a missing sign, standing water, a dropped edge. That points at the Florida Department of Transportation or the county, and it starts a § 768.28 notice rather than an ordinary claim.
Pull your own declarations page
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks. Florida does not require any driver to carry bodily injury liability, so your own policy is often the ceiling.
Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement
You are not required to. The answer given in the first week gets quoted back for the next two years.
05 The kinds of crash this covers
The same roads, five different claims
Hillsborough County recorded 26,269 traffic crashes in 2024, with 17,359 people injured and 180 killed, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. That is a county figure: there is no published count for Brandon alone, and anyone quoting one is estimating. Which of them a six-lane retail arterial produces is the local part.
Car accidents
The bulk of it, and on a retail arterial the pattern is turning and rear-end rather than high speed — a turn across traffic into an entrance, and the queue it creates behind it.
The fourteen-day deadline applies to every one of them, whoever was at fault.
Truck accidents
Interstate 75 carries freight the length of the state, and the interchange funnels it onto an arterial where a loaded truck is sharing signals with shopping traffic.
It is also a different case: a company behind the driver, a USDOT number, and records kept for a defined period and then lawfully destroyed.
Pedestrian accidents
State Road 60 is six lanes wide with long gaps between signals, and people cross between the businesses on either side rather than walking to the light.
These turn on how fault is divided, and more than half the fault means recovering nothing at all.
Motorcycle accidents
The turning traffic that leaves two cars with a dented fender puts a rider on the road, and serious trauma in Hillsborough goes to Tampa General, the county’s only Level I trauma center.
Motorcyclists are not required to carry Personal Injury Protection, which changes the coverage question from day one.
Uninsured drivers
Florida requires no driver to carry bodily injury liability coverage at all, so the underinsured case — limits smaller than the harm done — is the common one rather than the exception.
The claim moves to your own policy, which makes the declarations page the most important document in the file.
06 Also for Brandon
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice. The rest run from the Tampa office, each with its own page and its own fee terms.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship. None of Florida’s three immigration courts is in Tampa, so a Brandon case is often controlled from Orlando — and a detained one from wherever the person is held.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, filed downtown at 800 East Twiggs Street.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges, theft and domestic violence, after an arrest by the Sheriff’s deputies who police this side of the county.
Property insurance claims
A denied or underpaid claim on a Brandon home or business, where a lot of the housing went up quickly enough that a water or roof loss becomes an argument about workmanship.
07 How this works
The consultation, the documents, and what it costs
The first conversation is with Jose A. Dapena, not with an intake department. On an injury matter it is free and commits you to nothing, and it can happen by phone.
The Tampa office is at 4231 N Habana Avenue, west of downtown and a straightforward run in from Brandon. It is the office that serves all of Hillsborough County.
Fees differ by practice and are stated before anything is signed. Injury work is contingent, normally payable only if there is a recovery, with costs governed by the written agreement. Family and immigration are hourly, with payment plans and separate government filing fees. Criminal is a flat fee set by the charges and the scope, with no payment plans. The free consultation is an injury term and does not travel to the others.
08 Who you deal with
Jose A. Dapena
Admitted to The Florida Bar in 1998, number 152358, and admitted to the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida — the Middle District is the federal court that covers Hillsborough.
Before representing injured people he was in-house counsel for a Personal Injury Protection carrier, reviewing claims on the insurer’s behalf: the same analysis a claim meets now, learned from the other side of the file.
09 The law behind this
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 Personal Injury Protection
80% of medical expenses and 60% of lost wages up to $10,000, and the fourteen-day deadline for initial care.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.28 Claims against the county or the state
Written notice first, and three years to give it — to the agency, and also to the Florida Department of Financial Services where the defendant is the state rather than the county. Six months for the agency to respond, and caps of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is the whole argument in a pedestrian case.
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11 Deadlines
Two years to sue on most negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023 — four years where the defendant is a government.
10 Official resources
- FLHSMV crash portalWhere a crash report is requested, whichever agency wrote it
- Hillsborough County Sheriff’s OfficeThe agency that polices unincorporated Hillsborough, Brandon included
- Thirteenth Judicial CircuitThe court a Hillsborough case is filed in
- Hillsborough Clerk of CourtFiling, case search and the forms a self-represented party needs
Questions
Is there a Brandon police department?
No. Brandon is unincorporated Hillsborough County, so the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office polices it and writes the report. The county has only three incorporated cities — Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City — and Brandon, with 114,626 people, is not one of them. On Interstate 75 and the state roads it may be the Florida Highway Patrol.
Is there an office in Brandon?
No. The office is at 4231 N Habana Avenue in Tampa, west of downtown. It is the office that serves all of Hillsborough County, and a first conversation can happen by phone.
My crash was at the I-75 interchange.
Then the report is probably the Florida Highway Patrol’s, and the speeds there tend to make injuries worse. The claim runs under the same Florida law and is still a Hillsborough case.
I think the road or the signal caused it. Who do I claim against?
It depends which government owns the road. Interstate 75 and State Road 60 are state roads maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation; Lumsden, Bloomingdale and Causeway are county roads. Either way the claim runs under Fla. Stat. § 768.28, which means written notice within three years and six months for the agency to respond before suit.
I was taken to Brandon Regional and then to Tampa General.
That is the ordinary path for a serious injury here, because Tampa General is the county’s only Level I trauma center. It means the record exists in two systems, and both halves have to be collected before the claim can be valued honestly.
Where would my case be heard?
In the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at the Hillsborough County Courthouse, 800 East Twiggs Street in downtown Tampa. Most injury claims are resolved without a lawsuit.
How long do I have?
Fourteen days to get initial care for Personal Injury Protection to pay anything, and two years to sue on most negligence claims. If a government is the defendant, four years to sue but written notice within three.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a Brandon crash
The Tampa office on North Habana Avenue serves all of Hillsborough County, and the first conversation about an injury costs nothing. If the matter is not an injury, the fee terms are set out in writing before anything begins.