Area served · Miami-Dade
Car accident lawyer serving Kendall
Three expressways feeding one six-lane arterial, with a trauma center in the middle of it
A crash in Kendall is a Miami-Dade claim, and most of what decides it is the same as a crash anywhere in the county — the same fourteen-day treatment deadline, the same injury threshold, the same courthouse on West Flagler Street. What is different is the road it happened on. Kendall funnels three expressways into one six-lane arterial lined end to end with retail, which produces left turns across oncoming traffic and rear-end impacts at commercial entrances rather than the open-highway crash people picture. It also has one of only two Level I trauma centers in Miami-Dade, so a serious injury here is frequently treated here instead of transferred. What follows is the Kendall part of that, and the other matters this office handles for people in Kendall.
01 What a Kendall crash usually is
Turning traffic and retail entrances, not open highway
Kendall Drive is thirteen miles of six-lane arterial with a business entrance every few hundred feet. That geometry produces a specific set of collisions: left turns across oncoming traffic, rear-end impacts in stop-and-go backups, and vehicles pulling out of shopping center access roads into traffic moving at forty-five. None of them look dramatic, and all of them produce the neck and back injuries that get waved off at the scene and diagnosed six weeks later.
The Dadeland stretch is the densest part of it. Beyond the Palmetto interchange the mall occupies the north side of the road for about half a mile, and the traffic there is almost entirely turning, merging and parking. Low speed does not mean low injury — it means the other driver’s insurer will call it minor, and that argument is answered with medical records rather than with photographs of bumpers.
Then the expressway ramps do the opposite. The Palmetto, SR 826, the Don Shula, SR 874, and the Florida Turnpike extension all meet Kendall Drive within a few miles. Merge-point collisions there happen at closing speeds that put people in a trauma bay, and they frequently involve more than two vehicles — which means more than one insurer and a longer argument about who is responsible for what share.
And people cross Kendall Drive where the crossings are not. Six lanes, long gaps between signals, and bus stops opposite the places people are going. A pedestrian claim turns almost entirely on how fault is divided, and under Florida law more than half the fault means no recovery at all — which is why the distance to the nearest marked crossing is a fact worth measuring rather than estimating.
Low speed does not mean low injury. It means the insurer will call it minor, and that argument is answered with medical records rather than with photographs of bumpers.
02 The thing nobody tells you about Kendall
Kendall is not a city, and that decides three things
Eighty thousand people live in Kendall across about sixteen square miles, and it has no city government. The 2020 Census counted 80,241 residents in the Kendall CDP, which would make it one of the larger cities in Florida — except that it is unincorporated Miami-Dade, so there is no city hall, no municipal police department and no city court. That single fact explains most of what confuses people about a case from here.
There is no Kendall Police, so a Kendall crash report does not exist under that name. Crashes across unincorporated Kendall are worked by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office out of the Kendall District Station at 7707 SW 117th Avenue, (305) 279-6929, which is part of its South Operations Division. People lose weeks searching for a city department that was never there. On the Palmetto, the Don Shula and the Turnpike it is the Florida Highway Patrol instead, and the report comes through the FLHSMV crash portal either way.
And there is no Kendall court. A Kendall civil case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit and heard at the main courthouse on West Flagler Street. The South Dade Justice Center takes the far south of the county, not Kendall. Family matters go to the Family Division at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center and felony criminal matters to the Gerstein Justice Building — so which building depends on the kind of case rather than on the address. Most injury claims never reach any of them, because most resolve with the insurer before a suit is filed.
The unincorporated county is also where the worst crashes are. In 2023 Miami-Dade’s unincorporated areas — which is what Kendall is — accounted for more deadly and serious-injury crashes than any single municipality in the county: 659 crashes leaving 771 people killed or seriously injured, on county data reported by NBC6 Miami. That is an unincorporated-area figure rather than a Kendall-only one; no published count exists for Kendall by itself, and anybody quoting one is estimating.
Kendall has one of Miami-Dade’s two Level I trauma centers. HCA Florida Kendall Hospital is designated Level I; the other is Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial. That is not a detail. In most of the county a serious injury means a transfer, and a transfer means the medical file ends up in two institutions with a gap between them. In Kendall it frequently stays in one, which makes the record cleaner and the injury easier to prove.
Baptist Hospital of Miami sits on the south side of Kendall Drive near Galloway Road and sees a large share of the less-severe injuries. Knowing which hospital holds the record is most of getting the record, and the two are separate systems that do not share files with each other automatically.
The crash report comes from whichever agency worked it. Across unincorporated Kendall that is the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office; on the Palmetto, the Don Shula and the Turnpike it is the Florida Highway Patrol. Writing down the agency and the report number at the scene saves weeks of requesting from the wrong place.
03 The roads
Kendall Drive, and the three highways that empty into it
Kendall Drive, SW 88th Street, carries State Road 94 for most of its length and is the spine of the area. It is where most of these claims come from, and the stretch between the Palmetto and Galloway Road is where the retail density, the hospital traffic and the turning movements all overlap at once.
The Palmetto Expressway, SR 826, carries the through traffic of the whole county and interchanges with Kendall Drive. Lane-change and merge collisions here are high-energy, and the multi-vehicle ones take longest to resolve because each insurer has an interest in a different version of events.
The Don Shula Expressway, SR 874, and the Florida Turnpike extension cross the area to the south and west. Both are limited-access, both feed commuters onto Kendall Drive at predictable hours, and both are Florida Highway Patrol territory for reporting purposes.
Killian Parkway, Sunset Drive and SW 104th Street run parallel and absorb the overflow when Kendall Drive backs up, which puts arterial volumes onto residential-scale roads at exactly the times people are least expecting them.
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 of the crash — not a reduced amount, nothing. It is the deadline that expires before most people have decided what to do, and it applies whether you were driving, walking or on a bicycle.
Photograph the scene before anything moves
Both vehicles and their positions, the lane markings, the business entrance or ramp involved, and the signal if there was one. On Kendall Drive the question is usually who was turning and who had the green, and that is answered from the physical evidence rather than from the two accounts.
Write down the agency and the report number
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office across unincorporated Kendall, the Florida Highway Patrol on the Palmetto, the Don Shula and the Turnpike. The report comes through the FLHSMV crash portal, usually about ten days later.
Get the names at the scene
Kendall Drive carries traffic from across the county, so a witness is frequently somebody nobody can find a month later. A phone number taken at the roadside is worth more than it looks.
Pull your own declarations page
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks across vehicles. Florida does not require any driver to carry bodily injury coverage, so your own policy is frequently the ceiling on what can be recovered.
Give no recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer
You are not required to. The questions are competent and designed to produce useful answers about how you feel today, and the answer given in week one gets quoted for the next two years.
Keep both hospitals’ records if there were two
HCA Florida Kendall and Baptist are separate systems. If you were seen at one and followed up at the other, the claim needs both, and neither will send you the other’s file.
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 — there is no published Kendall-only count, and anybody quoting one is estimating. What is specific to Kendall is which of these the roads here produce, and the law for each is on the county page it links to.
Car accidents
The bulk of it, and on Kendall Drive it is overwhelmingly left turns across oncoming traffic and rear-end impacts at commercial entrances. Both are low-speed, both are routinely called minor by the other driver’s insurer, and both produce the soft-tissue and disc injuries that are diagnosed weeks later.
The fourteen-day treatment deadline applies to every one of them.
Truck accidents
Less common here than on the freight corridors, but the Palmetto carries through-traffic for the whole county and a loaded truck on an interchange ramp is a different injury from a car at the same speed.
It is also a different case: there is a company behind the driver, a USDOT number, maintenance records and hours-of-service logs — and all of it is kept for a defined period and then lawfully destroyed, which is why the preservation request goes out early.
Pedestrian accidents
Six lanes, long gaps between signals, and bus stops opposite the places people are walking to. Crossing where the crossing is not is the recurring fact pattern here.
These turn almost entirely on how fault is divided, because more than half the fault means no recovery at all. The distance to the nearest marked crossing is worth measuring rather than estimating.
Bicycle accidents
Kendall Drive has no protected bike infrastructure for most of its length, so riders use the shoulder and the parallel streets — Killian Parkway, SW 104th — which carry arterial overflow at the worst times.
A cyclist struck by a car can reach Personal Injury Protection through a household policy even without owning a car, which people in this position routinely assume is not available to them.
Motorcycle accidents
The turning-traffic pattern that produces a sore neck between two cars puts a rider on the ground, and the injuries are a different order of severity — which is when HCA Florida Kendall being a Level I trauma center stops being a detail.
Motorcyclists are not required to carry PIP, which changes the whole coverage analysis from the first day rather than later.
06 Also handled for Kendall
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 South Miami office by the same attorney, on its own fee terms, and each has its own page where the law is explained properly.
Property insurance claims
A denied, underpaid or delayed claim on a Kendall house or condominium. Florida shortened these deadlines by statute in recent years and the first one is shorter than most policyholders expect: one year to give notice of the claim, counted from the date of loss rather than from the day the damage became visible, which is what catches a roof leak that showed up months later as a stain on a ceiling.
A denial is also not one thing. It is a coverage denial, a causation denial, or a disagreement about the amount — and the three have completely different routes. Reading the letter for which one it is comes before anything else.
Immigration
Removal defense and bond, asylum, U and T visas, VAWA, waivers, family petitions, adjustment of status, citizenship, DACA and TPS. Miami-Dade holds two of Florida’s three immigration courts, and which one a case is in is decided by whether the person is detained and by which DHS office issued the charging document — never by where they live.
This office handles criminal defense as well, which matters more here than it does in most places: a plea that reads as a good outcome in state court can be a conviction for immigration purposes, and the two sides are better read together than one after the other.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, child support, alimony, property division, paternity, modifications and injunctions for protection, filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit and heard at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center rather than at the civil courthouse.
Two statutory deadlines catch people out and neither is local: six months of Florida residency before a petition can be filed, and the parent education course within forty-five days of filing where there are minor children. Missing the second one holds up a case that is otherwise finished.
Criminal defense
The first twenty-four hours, bond and the conditions of release, DUI, drug charges, theft, assault and battery, domestic violence, probation violations, and sealing and expungement.
First appearance happens within about a day of arrest, and the conditions set there — no contact, surrender of a passport, a curfew, GPS — govern daily life for months. A DUI arrest also starts a separate ten-day clock on the driver license that the criminal court will not mention.
07 How this works
The consultation, the documents, and what it costs
The first conversation is with Jose A. Dapena, not an intake department or a case manager. On an injury matter it is free and there is no obligation. It can happen by phone, and frequently does — there is no requirement to drive to South Miami to find out whether there is a claim worth pursuing.
Bring whatever exists, incomplete rather than not at all. For a crash: the report or the exchange of information, every medical record and bill, photographs of the vehicles and of any visible injury, your own insurance declarations page, and anything the other driver’s insurer has already sent. For any other matter, whatever document started it.
The fee terms differ by practice and they are stated before anything is signed. Injury work is a contingency fee, generally payable only on recovery, with case expenses governed by the written representation agreement. Family and immigration are billed hourly, with payment plans available and government filing fees separate. Criminal is a flat fee set by the charges and the scope of the representation, with no payment plans. The free consultation is an injury term and does not apply to the others.
The office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102, in South Miami — a few blocks west of US-1, near the South Miami Metrorail station, with parking on site. Sunset Drive is signed three ways on three different maps: the county grid calls it SW 72nd Street and the state calls it FL-986. From most of Kendall it is a short run east.
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. That is the same analysis a claim gets now, run from the other side of the file — a specific kind of relevant experience rather than a general claim about years in practice.
You deal with him directly at every stage. Not an intake department, not a case manager, and not a different lawyer once the file is open.
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. § 627.737 The injury threshold
What an injury has to amount to before pain and suffering can be claimed from the at-fault driver.
- 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, usually available about ten days afterward
- Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office recordsFor a crash worked by the Sheriff across unincorporated Kendall
- Kendall District Station7707 SW 117th Avenue, (305) 279-6929 — the station that covers unincorporated Kendall
- Eleventh Judicial CircuitThe court a Kendall case is filed in, and where a case number is checked
- Miami-Dade Clerk of the CourtsFiling, case search, and the forms a self-represented party needs
Questions
Is there an office in Kendall?
No. The office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102 in South Miami, a short drive east from most of Kendall. Saying otherwise would be inventing a location — the three real offices are in South Miami, Homestead and Tampa.
How do I get a Kendall police report?
There is no Kendall police department — Kendall is unincorporated, so a crash here is worked by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office out of the Kendall District Station at 7707 SW 117th Avenue, (305) 279-6929. On the Palmetto, the Don Shula or the Turnpike it is the Florida Highway Patrol. Either way the report itself comes through the FLHSMV crash portal, usually about ten days later.
Do I have to come in to start?
No. On an injury matter the first conversation can happen by phone and frequently does. Coming in is useful once there are documents to go through, not before.
I was taken to Kendall Hospital. Does that help or hurt?
It simplifies things. HCA Florida Kendall is one of the county’s two Level I trauma centers, so a serious injury treated there is often not transferred, and the medical file stays in one institution rather than splitting across two with a gap in the middle.
The crash was in the Dadeland parking lot.
Still a claim, and frequently a more layered one. A collision on private property can involve the property owner as well as the other driver, and a crash report may not exist in the same form — which makes photographs and witness names matter more rather than less.
The other driver had no insurance.
Common, because Florida does not require any driver to carry bodily injury coverage at all. The claim moves to your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks across vehicles can change the available amount substantially. Pull the declarations page before deciding anything.
My matter is not a car accident. Do you still handle it?
Yes. Property insurance claims, immigration, family law and criminal defense are all handled from the same 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 Kendall crash
The South Miami office on Sunset Drive serves Kendall, 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.