Area we serve · Hillsborough County
Car accident lawyer in Drew Park
A district with 1,780 residents and 576 commercial and industrial parcels
A crash in Drew Park is a Hillsborough County claim under the same Florida law as anywhere else: fourteen days to get initial care, the injury threshold, two years to sue. What is local is who gets hurt here. Drew Park is 829 acres inside the City of Tampa, between Tampa International Airport and Dale Mabry Highway, and the 2010 census counted 1,780 residents in it — against 576 commercial and industrial parcels on the city’s own rolls. Almost nobody hurt in Drew Park lives in Drew Park. They are at work, making a delivery, or crossing the district to reach somewhere else, and that changes which claims are available to them. The statutes are on the Florida car accident page. What follows is about this district.
01 What a crash here actually looks like
A working district rather than a neighborhood
The district runs from Hillsborough Avenue on the north to Tampa Bay Boulevard on the south, with Tampa International Airport closing the west side and Dale Mabry Highway the east. Three of those four edges carry highway volumes and the fourth is an airport.
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard cuts straight through the middle, so the interior is not quiet either. It is a signalized arterial running between an airport and a stadium, lined with light industry.
The traffic is commercial. Industrial and manufacturing property carries more taxable value here than office and retail together — roughly $129 million against $82 million on the city’s own accounting of the redevelopment area. That means box trucks, tractor-trailers, tow trucks, cargo vans and shuttle buses sharing narrow streets with the cars of the people who work in them.
The airport has been buying the district for decades. The Hillsborough County Aviation Authority announced plans in 1988 to acquire several hundred acres of Drew Park for airport expansion and has since taken 96% of the parcels in the acquisition area by its own count. Construction traffic, closed driveways and rerouted access are a standing condition here, not a temporary one.
Almost nobody hurt in Drew Park lives in Drew Park.
02 What nobody tells you
Hurt at work and hurt on the road are two different claims
Drew Park is inside the City of Tampa, so the Tampa Police Department writes the crash report. On Hillsborough Avenue, a state road, the Florida Highway Patrol may work it instead. Unincorporated county — and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office — begins a short distance north and west.
Most people hurt here are on the clock, and that is not one claim but two. There is the workers’ compensation system, which this office does not handle, and there is a separate claim against whoever actually caused the harm: the other driver, the trucking company, the property owner, the contractor on site. The second one is injury work, it is not limited by the compensation schedule, and it is frequently the larger of the two.
St. Joseph’s Hospital is a mile and a half east, at 3001 West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — on the same boulevard that runs through the district. It is a Level II adult trauma center and a state-designated pediatric trauma center. Tampa General is the county’s only Level I adult trauma center. With a trauma center that close, the fourteen-day deadline has no excuse behind it.
Steinbrenner Field sits inside the district, at Dale Mabry and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and Raymond James Stadium is directly across Dale Mabry to the east, joined by a pedestrian bridge. On event days tens of thousands of people park in and walk through a district built for freight. The crash pattern on a game night is not the crash pattern on a Tuesday morning.
A Drew Park case is filed in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at 800 East Twiggs Street. Most injury claims are resolved with the insurer before any lawsuit is filed.
03 The roads
Where the claims actually come from
Dale Mabry Highway, the eastern boundary, built in 1943 to connect Drew Field with MacDill and now one of the six-lane roads where Tampa’s Vision Zero program finds 40% of its killed and severely injured pedestrians and cyclists.
Hillsborough Avenue, the northern boundary, a state road moving through traffic past commercial driveways. The pedestrian deaths reported on this stretch share a shape: a crossing made outside a marked crosswalk, a driver who stayed, and no criminal charges filed.
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, through the middle, mixing airport, stadium and industrial traffic on the same signals.
Tampa Bay Boulevard, the southern boundary, past Hillsborough Community College’s Dale Mabry campus — student traffic arriving and leaving on a class schedule, into a district otherwise built for trucks.
The interior streets and Air Cargo Road, where loading, backing and turning go on all day in places never designed for anyone on foot, and where the commercial vehicle involved almost always carries more coverage than a private car would.
04 What to do now
The things that can only be done in the first two weeks
This is a checklist. It is not advice about your own case, and none of it requires hiring anyone.
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. St. Joseph’s is a mile and a half east on the same boulevard that runs through the district.
Say whether you were working
If you were on the clock, on a delivery, or driving a company vehicle, say so in the first conversation. It changes which claims exist and who the defendant is, and it is the fact most often left out.
Identify the commercial vehicle properly
The company name on the door, the US DOT number, the trailer number, the plate. A commercial policy is often the reason the claim is worth bringing, and the vehicle is gone before anyone thinks to write any of it down.
Note which agency responded
Tampa Police inside the district, the Florida Highway Patrol on Hillsborough Avenue, the Sheriff once you cross north or west. Write down the agency and the report number — the report is requested the same way whichever one wrote it.
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
A district of trucks, and the four claims it produces
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. No published count exists for Drew Park alone. What is specific here is who carries the loss: the 2010 census put per capita income in the district at $9,887, with about 26% of residents below the poverty line. That is the population least able to absorb two weeks of medical bills while an adjuster calls the $10,000 Personal Injury Protection limit the end of the matter.
Car accidents
Still the bulk of it. What differs here is the other vehicle: it is often a work vehicle, which puts a commercial policy behind the crash and an employer with its own counsel into the file within days.
Truck accidents
A district whose tax base is industrial is a district of box trucks and tractor-trailers. Driver logs, inspection records and electronic data exist in these cases and are kept only for set periods, which is why the preservation letter goes out before anything else does.
Workplace accidents
Being hurt on the job is the ordinary case in Drew Park. This office does not handle workers’ compensation. It handles the separate claim against whoever actually caused the injury — another driver, a contractor, a property owner, the maker of a machine — which is not capped by the compensation schedule.
Pedestrian accidents
Walking here means walking where nothing was built for walking. The reported deaths on Hillsborough Avenue follow one pattern: a crossing outside a marked crosswalk and no charges filed. No charges is not the same as no claim — that argument runs under § 768.81, where more than half the fault means recovering nothing at all.
06 Also for Drew Park
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice. The rest run from the Tampa office a few minutes east, each with its own page and its own fee terms.
Property insurance claims
In a district of warehouses, shops and small commercial buildings, the claim that comes up is a roof or water loss on a building that has to keep working, where the insurer disputes the cause and the business loses income for every week the argument runs.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship. None of Florida’s three immigration courts is in Tampa, so what controls a case is not where you live.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges and theft, after an arrest by Tampa Police rather than by the Sheriff. A district with a stadium on its eastern edge produces its own share of stops on Dale Mabry on event nights.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, filed downtown at 800 East Twiggs Street.
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, a few minutes east of here. 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 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. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is the whole argument when someone is struck outside a crosswalk.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.28 Claims against the city
Written notice to the city within three years, six months for it to respond, and caps of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11 Deadlines
Two years to sue on most negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023.
10 Official resources
- FLHSMV crash portalWhere a crash report is requested, whichever agency wrote it
- Tampa Police DepartmentThe agency that works crashes inside the city limits
- 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
Who writes the crash report in Drew Park?
The Tampa Police Department, because Drew Park is inside the city limits. On Hillsborough Avenue the Florida Highway Patrol may work it instead, and a short distance north or west the area becomes unincorporated county, where the report belongs to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
I was hurt at work. Is that this kind of case?
Partly. This office does not handle workers’ compensation claims. It handles the separate claim against whoever actually caused the injury, which in a district like this is usually another driver, a trucking company, a contractor or a property owner. Those two claims can run at the same time, and the second one is not capped by the compensation schedule.
A company truck hit me. Does that change anything?
Yes, in both directions. There is normally far more coverage behind a commercial vehicle than behind a private car. There is also a company with counsel involved within days, and driver logs, inspection records and electronic data that exist now and are kept only for set periods.
Which hospital would I be taken to?
St. Joseph’s Hospital, 3001 West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a mile and a half east on the same boulevard that runs through the district — a Level II adult trauma center and a state-designated pediatric trauma center. Tampa General is the county’s only Level I adult trauma center.
Is there an office in Drew Park?
No. The office is at 4231 N Habana Avenue, a few minutes east, and it serves all of Hillsborough County.
Where would my case be heard?
In the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at the Hillsborough County Courthouse, 800 East Twiggs Street. 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 the city is the defendant, four years to sue but written notice within three.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a crash in Drew Park
The Tampa office on North Habana Avenue is a few minutes east and serves all of Hillsborough County. The first conversation about an injury costs nothing.