Area served · South Miami-Dade
Car accident lawyer serving Florida City
Thirteen thousand residents, and every vehicle going to the Keys
A crash in Florida City is a Miami-Dade claim with one unusual feature: the town is small and the traffic is not. Thirteen thousand people live here, and every vehicle traveling to or from the Florida Keys passes through, because US-1 below Florida City is the only highway there is. That changes who is in the crash, when it happens, and whether a witness can still be found next week. The law is the same — the fourteen-day treatment deadline, the injury threshold, two years to sue — and it is explained in full on the Florida car accident page. What follows is the Florida City part of it, and the other matters this office handles for people here.
01 What a Florida City crash usually is
A small town carrying somebody else’s traffic
Florida City had 13,085 residents at the 2020 Census. That number tells you almost nothing about the crash exposure, because the town sits at the end of the Florida Turnpike and at the top of the only road to the Keys. On a Friday afternoon or a Sunday evening the traffic through it has nothing to do with the people who live in it.
The result is a lot of out-of-town drivers on roads they do not know. Rental cars, out-of-state plates, drivers who have been on the road for hours and drivers who are three minutes into a long trip. Practically that means the other driver may be insured somewhere else under different limits, a rental company’s coverage may be in play, and a witness may be four hundred miles away by the time anybody asks them anything.
Palm Drive is where it concentrates. The Turnpike ends there, US-1 crosses it, and the Florida Keys Outlet Marketplace at 250 East Palm Drive sits on that junction because it is the natural first and last stop of that drive. Turning traffic, unfamiliar drivers and a highway terminus in the same few hundred yards.
And the congestion crashes get dismissed. Southbound backs up on a holiday weekend and northbound does not; the low-speed impacts that come out of that are routinely called minor at the scene, which is exactly the setting where a neck injury is waved off and diagnosed six weeks later.
Thirteen thousand people live here. Every vehicle going to the Keys passes through. The population tells you nothing about the crash exposure.
02 The thing nobody tells you about Florida City
Florida City IS a city — which changes who writes your report, and nothing else
Unlike most of South Dade, Florida City is incorporated. It has been a municipality since December 29, 1914, it has a mayor and council, and it has its own police department with its own chief. So unlike an unincorporated community, a crash inside the city limits does produce a city police report — from the Florida City Police Department, (305) 247-8223. City Hall is at 404 West Palm Drive.
Being a city does not give you a court, though. The case still goes to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, and for most state matters from the south of the county that means the South Dade Justice Center at 10710 SW 211th Street rather than West Flagler Street downtown. Family matters are the exception and are heard downtown at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center.
Four agencies work crashes within a very small area. Florida City Police inside the city limits, Homestead Police a few blocks north inside theirs, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in the unincorporated land between and around them, and the Florida Highway Patrol on the Turnpike and the open stretches of US-1. Requesting a report from the wrong one is the most common reason a Florida City claim stalls in its first month.
The report comes through the FLHSMV crash portal whoever wrote it, usually about ten days later. Under § 316.066(2)(a) a crash report that reveals personal information is confidential for sixty days, and § 316.066(2)(b) lets the parties involved and their legal representatives obtain it immediately — so being told to wait two months is almost always a misunderstanding about which category you are in.
03 The roads
One highway south, one alternate, and a turnpike that stops here
US-1, South Dixie Highway, is the main route north and the only highway to the Keys. The serious crashes in this area happen on it more than anywhere else, and the traffic on it is a mix of local trips and people making a two-hundred-mile drive.
Palm Drive, SW 344th Street, is the town’s main crossing and the end of the Florida Turnpike. Keys-bound traffic, local traffic and the outlet center all meet there.
Card Sound Road, SR-905A, is the two-lane alternate to the Keys — long, unlit and used most heavily when US-1 is already congested, which is exactly when drivers are least patient.
Krome Avenue, SR-997, carries the agricultural traffic of the whole area north of town: packing trucks, equipment crossing between fields, and long rural stretches with no lighting and no usable shoulder.
04 What to do now
The things that are only possible in the first two weeks
None of this is advice about a particular case and none of it requires hiring anybody. It is the sequence that protects a claim regardless of who eventually handles it.
Be seen within fourteen days
Personal Injury Protection pays nothing at all unless initial care happens inside fourteen days — not a reduced amount, nothing. It is the deadline that expires before most people have decided what to do.
Work out which agency it was, at the scene
Florida City Police inside the city, Homestead Police north of it, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in between, the Florida Highway Patrol on the Turnpike and the open US-1. Write down the agency and the report number — it is the single thing that saves the most time later.
Get names and numbers before anyone drives off
More than anywhere else on this site, a witness here may be genuinely unreachable in a week. Somebody heading for Key Largo is not coming back to give a statement.
Photograph the scene and the light
Both vehicles and their positions, the lane markings, the junction, and what could actually be seen. On Card Sound or the unlit stretches of Krome, a photograph of the available light is evidence nobody can reconstruct later.
Note whether it was a rental or out-of-state
It changes the coverage analysis and it takes longer to establish. The plate, the rental company sticker and the state are worth capturing.
Pull your own declarations page
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks. Florida requires no bodily injury coverage at all, and in this area that is the ordinary case rather than the unusual one.
Give no recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer
You are not required to. The answer given in week one is quoted for the next two years.
05 The kinds of crash this covers
Same roads, five different claims
Miami-Dade County recorded 60,000 traffic crashes in 2024, injuring 29,359 people and killing 272, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. That is a county figure — no published count exists for Florida City alone, and anybody quoting one is estimating. What is specific here is which of these roads produce, and the law for each is on the page it links to.
Car accidents
The bulk of it, and here it splits between the congestion impacts on US-1 and the higher-speed crashes at the Turnpike terminus and on the open road south.
The fourteen-day treatment deadline applies to every one of them, whoever was at fault.
Truck accidents
Agricultural freight rather than warehouse distribution: produce out of the packing houses, nursery stock going north, equipment crossing between fields onto roads with no acceleration lane.
A different case as well as a different injury — there is a company behind the driver, a USDOT number, and records kept for a defined period and then lawfully destroyed.
Pedestrian accidents
Palm Drive and the US-1 crossings, often before sunrise or after dark, and often by people walking to or from work rather than strolling.
These turn on how fault is divided, and more than half the fault means no recovery at all.
Uninsured drivers
Florida does not require any driver to carry bodily injury coverage, and in the far south of the county that is the common outcome rather than the rare one.
The claim moves to your own policy, which makes the declarations page the most important document in the file.
Work injuries
Nurseries, packing houses and field work, where the claim against an employer is usually barred but the claim against everyone else is not.
And on a small farm the agricultural exclusion may mean workers’ compensation never applied at all — which removes the bar along with the coverage.
06 Also handled for Florida City
The other matters this office takes from this area
Injury work is most of what this office does and it is not all of it. Each of these is handled from the same Homestead office by the same attorney, on its own fee terms, and each has its own page where the law is explained properly.
Immigration
Removal defense and bond, asylum, U and T visas, VAWA, waivers, family petitions, adjustment of status, citizenship, DACA and TPS. The Miami Krome Immigration Court sits inside the processing center on SW 12th Street and controls the detained cases a family here is most likely to be in.
Which court a case is in is decided by custody and by which DHS office issued the charging document, never by where somebody lives.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, child support, alimony, property, paternity, modifications and injunctions for protection.
One fact cuts against this office and is better said than discovered: an injury case from here is heard at the South Dade Justice Center, but the Family Division sits downtown. That is a longer trip than people expect.
Criminal defense
The first twenty-four hours, bond and the conditions of release, DUI, drug charges, theft, assault and battery, domestic violence and probation violations.
Which building a case runs through depends on the charge rather than the address, and a DUI arrest starts a separate ten-day clock on the driver license that the criminal court will not mention.
Property insurance claims
A denied, underpaid or delayed claim on a Florida City home or business — and in a town this exposed to weather, that is not a rare problem.
Notice of a claim is due within one year of the date of loss, counted from the loss rather than from the day the damage became visible.
07 How this works
The consultation, the documents, and what it costs
The first conversation is with Jose A. Dapena, not an intake department. On an injury matter it is free and there is no obligation, and it can happen by phone.
The Homestead office is at 100 NE 15th Street, Suite 210, a few minutes north of Florida City on US-1 or Krome Avenue. It is the closest DAPENALAW office to anywhere in the far south of the county by a long way — the next one is in South Miami.
Bring whatever exists, incomplete rather than not at all. The report or the exchange of information, every medical record and bill, photographs, your own declarations page, and anything the other driver’s insurer has already sent.
Fee terms differ by practice and are stated before anything is signed. Injury work is a contingency fee, generally payable only on recovery, with case expenses governed by the written agreement. Family and immigration are hourly with payment plans available and government fees separate. 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 apply to the others.
08 Who you work with
Jose A. Dapena
Admitted to The Florida Bar in 1998, Florida Bar number 152358, and admitted to the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida.
Before representing injured people he was in-house counsel for a Personal Injury Protection carrier, reviewing claims on behalf of the insurer — the same analysis a claim gets now, run from the other side of the file.
You deal with him directly at every stage, not with an intake department or a case manager.
09 The law behind this
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 Personal Injury Protection
80% of medical expenses and 60% of lost income up to $10,000, and the fourteen-day deadline for initial care.
- Fla. Stat. § 316.066 Crash reports
Confidential for sixty days, except to the parties involved and their legal representatives, who may obtain it immediately.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is why apportionment is the whole fight in a pedestrian case.
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11 Time limits
Two years to file suit for 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
- City of Florida CityCity Hall at 404 West Palm Drive; the police department is reached on (305) 247-8223
- Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office recordsFor a crash in the unincorporated land around the city limits
- Eleventh Judicial CircuitThe court a Florida City case is filed in
Questions
Who writes the crash report in Florida City?
Florida City has its own police department, so a crash inside the city limits is theirs — (305) 247-8223. A few blocks north it is Homestead Police, in the unincorporated land around it the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, and on the Turnpike and the open US-1 the Florida Highway Patrol. The report comes through the FLHSMV crash portal whoever wrote it.
Is there an office in Florida City?
No. The office is in downtown Homestead at 100 NE 15th Street, Suite 210, a few minutes north on US-1. It is the closest DAPENALAW office to Florida City and the only one in the south of the county.
Where would my case be heard?
Most state matters from the south of the county go to the South Dade Justice Center at 10710 SW 211th Street rather than downtown. Family matters are the exception. Most injury claims resolve without a lawsuit at all.
The other driver was from out of state or in a rental.
Common here, because everyone driving to the Keys comes through. Establishing which coverage applies takes longer in those cases, and your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage frequently keeps the claim moving while it is sorted out.
They told me the report is confidential for sixty days.
It is, to the public. Under § 316.066(2)(b) the parties involved in the crash and their legal representatives may obtain it immediately, so if you are one of those the sixty days does not apply to you.
My matter is not a car accident. Do you still handle it?
Yes — immigration, family law, criminal defense and property insurance claims are all handled from the Homestead office, each with its own page and its own fee terms. The free consultation is an injury term and does not apply to those.
How long do I have?
Fourteen days to receive initial care for PIP to pay anything at all, and two years to file suit for most negligence claims. The first is the one that runs out before people have decided what to do.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a Florida City crash
The Homestead office is a few minutes north on US-1, 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 any work begins.