Area we serve · Miami-Dade County
Car accident lawyer in Hialeah
The county’s second-largest city, ringed by other jurisdictions on every side
A crash in Hialeah is a Miami-Dade 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 the map. Hialeah is the second-largest city in Miami-Dade and it is hemmed in on every side by other jurisdictions, so which agency wrote the report depends on which block it happened on, not on which neighborhood anyone would say they were in. Getting that wrong is the most common reason one of these claims stalls in its first month. The statutes are set out in full on the Florida car accident page. What follows belongs to these blocks.
01 What a Hialeah crash actually looks like
A freight route, two expressways and a dense street grid
Okeechobee Road, US 27, runs diagonally across the whole city and is the route trucks take between the interstate system and the agricultural interior. It cuts across the grid at an angle, which produces intersections that meet at something other than ninety degrees and sightlines that are worse than drivers expect.
The Palmetto Expressway, State Road 826, runs along the western side, and the Gratigny Parkway, State Road 924, crosses the north. Both are limited-access roads worked by the Florida Highway Patrol, and both feed traffic into surface streets that were laid out long before either existed.
The street grid itself is dense and almost entirely four-way, with East and West numbered avenues running north-south and numbered streets running east-west. Most collisions here are intersection collisions at moderate speed, and most of them turn on who had the signal.
Industrial traffic is mixed in everywhere, not confined to one district. Warehouses, repair shops and distribution yards sit a block from houses, which means delivery vehicles and box trucks share residential streets with school traffic at the same hours.
The grid produces the most collisions. Okeechobee Road produces the worst ones.
02 The part nobody tells you about Hialeah
Four different agencies within a few blocks of each other
Hialeah had 223,109 residents at the 2020 Census, which makes it the second-largest city in Miami-Dade County and the sixth-largest in Florida. It runs its own police department from 5555 East 8th Avenue, and that is the agency that writes the report for a crash inside the city limits.
What catches people is everything immediately around it. Hialeah Gardens is a separate city with its own government to the west. Miami Lakes is a separate town to the north, policed under contract by the county rather than by a department of its own. Medley and Opa-locka are separate cities again, and between all of them sit stretches of unincorporated county where the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office responds.
So the agency depends on the block. Someone who says they were hurt “in Hialeah” may have a Hialeah Gardens report, a county report or a Florida Highway Patrol report from the Palmetto, and a request sent to the wrong agency comes back empty two weeks later. Write down the agency name and the report number at the scene, because afterward it is guesswork.
Where the City of Hialeah itself is the defendant, the rules change entirely. A city vehicle, or an injury from a dangerous condition on a street the city maintains, runs under Fla. Stat. § 768.28: written notice to the city within three years, six months for it to respond before suit, and recovery capped at $200,000 for one person and $300,000 for the incident. The period to file is four years rather than two.
A Hialeah case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court at 73 West Flagler Street. 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
Okeechobee Road, US 27, the diagonal freight route across the city, with angled intersections and truck traffic at surface-road speeds.
The Palmetto Expressway, State Road 826, along the western edge, limited-access and worked by the Florida Highway Patrol.
The Gratigny Parkway, State Road 924, across the north, feeding the Palmetto and the airport corridor.
West 49th Street and Hialeah Drive, the east-west commercial spines, where turning traffic and parking produce a steady run of moderate-speed collisions.
The numbered avenue grid, dense, four-way and residential, where school traffic and delivery vehicles share the same streets at the same hours.
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. 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. It is the deadline that expires before most people have decided what to do.
Write down the agency, not just the city
Hialeah Police inside the city limits, Hialeah Gardens or Miami Lakes a few blocks over, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in the unincorporated stretches, the Florida Highway Patrol on the Palmetto and the Gratigny. The agency name and the report number are the two things that are easy at the scene and hard afterward.
Photograph the intersection geometry
Where Okeechobee crosses the grid the angles are unusual, and what a driver could actually see from a stop line is the whole argument. A photograph taken from the driver’s eye level answers a question no diagram will.
Note anything commercial
A box truck, a van with a company name, a trailer. That is a different claim with a company behind the driver and records that exist for a defined period and are then lawfully destroyed.
Get names at the scene
In a dense grid the witnesses are people who live on the block and will still be there — but only if someone asked for a name while they were standing there.
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 on what can be recovered.
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, and it is not a conversation anyone should have unprepared.
05 The kinds of crash this covers
The same streets, five different claims
Miami-Dade County recorded roughly 60,000 traffic crashes in 2024, with 29,359 people injured, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. That is a county figure: there is no published count for Hialeah alone, and anyone quoting one is estimating. What is specific to here is which of these the city’s streets produce, and the law on each is on the page it links to.
Car accidents
The bulk of it, and in a four-way grid the pattern is intersections rather than speed: a signal, a stop line, and two accounts of who had it.
The fourteen-day deadline applies to every one of them, whoever was at fault.
Truck accidents
Okeechobee Road carries freight between the interstates and the agricultural interior, and a loaded truck at surface-road speed is a different injury from a car at the same speed.
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
The commercial spines are wide, the blocks are long, and people cross between the businesses on both sides rather than walking to a signal.
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 Miami-Dade goes to Ryder at Jackson Memorial or to HCA Florida Kendall, the county’s two Level I trauma centers.
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 Hialeah
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice and not all of it. The rest are handled from the same South Miami office, each on its own terms.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship, before the Miami and Krome courts — two of Florida’s three, and the two nearest Hialeah.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. Six months of Florida residency is required before a petition can be filed at all.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges, theft and domestic violence, after an arrest by Hialeah’s own officers or by one of the neighboring departments.
Property insurance claims
A denied, underpaid or delayed claim on a Hialeah home or on one of the small commercial buildings along the avenues, where a roof loss and a business interruption claim arrive together.
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 Miami office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102, in South Miami, with parking on site. It is the office that serves all of Miami-Dade, and most of a first conversation does not require anyone to drive anywhere.
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.
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. § 627.737 The injury threshold
What an injury has to reach before pain and suffering can be claimed from the driver at fault.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.28 Claims against a city or county
Written notice to the city within three years, six months for it to respond, and recovery capped at $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 — four years where the defendant is a government.
10 Official resources
- FLHSMV crash portalWhere a crash report is requested, whichever agency wrote it
- City of HialeahThe city whose police department works crashes inside the limits
- Eleventh Judicial CircuitThe court a Miami-Dade case is filed in
- Miami-Dade Clerk of the CourtsFiling, case search and the forms a self-represented party needs
Questions
Who writes the crash report in Hialeah?
The Hialeah Police Department, at 5555 East 8th Avenue, for anything inside the city limits. A few blocks over it may be Hialeah Gardens, Miami Lakes, Medley or Opa-locka, or the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in the unincorporated stretches. The Florida Highway Patrol works the Palmetto and the Gratigny.
Is there an office in Hialeah?
No. The office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102, in South Miami. It is the office that serves all of Miami-Dade, and a first conversation can happen by phone.
My crash was near Hialeah Gardens. Does that change anything?
It changes who holds the report, which is the practical thing that matters first. Hialeah Gardens is a separate city with its own government. The claim itself still runs under the same Florida law and is still a Miami-Dade case.
A city truck hit me. Is that different?
Very. A claim against the City of Hialeah runs under Fla. Stat. § 768.28: written notice to the city within three years, six months for it to respond before suit, and recovery capped at $200,000 for one person and $300,000 for the incident. The period to file is four years rather than two.
Where would my case be heard?
In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, at the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, 73 West Flagler Street. Most injury claims are resolved without a lawsuit.
My matter is not a car accident. Do you take those too?
Yes — immigration, family law, criminal defense and property insurance claims are all handled from the Miami 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 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. The fourteen-day one is the deadline that expires before most people have decided anything.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a Hialeah crash
The Miami office on Sunset Drive serves all of Miami-Dade, 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.