Area we serve · Miami-Dade County
Car accident lawyer in the Redland
An agricultural grid with no lighting, no shoulders and farm equipment on the road
A crash in the Redland 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 different here is the road itself. The Redland is unincorporated agricultural Miami-Dade, a grid of numbered streets and avenues running for miles between nurseries and groves, with no street lighting, no sidewalks and very little shoulder. Crashes here are found later, reached later and documented thinner than crashes in the city, and that shows up in the file months afterward. The statutes are on the Florida car accident page. What follows is about the road itself.
01 What a Redland crash actually looks like
A dark grid, slow vehicles, and one four-lane road through the middle
Krome Avenue, State Road 997, is the spine, and the Florida Department of Transportation has rebuilt it from a two-lane highway into a four-lane divided road with a median. Most of the land along it, in the department’s own description of the corridor, is farmland in truck farms and tree farms, with the wholesale nurseries that supply the landscape trade.
Everything either side of it is the agricultural grid: numbered streets east to west, numbered avenues north to south, two lanes, no lighting, no sidewalk and a drainage swale instead of a shoulder. A vehicle that leaves the lane here does not find a curb. It finds a ditch, a canal bank or a row of trees.
Slow vehicles share these roads legally — tractors, loaded flatbeds leaving a packing house, nursery trucks pulling out of a field entrance that has no turn lane and no warning. The speed differential is the hazard, and it is highest exactly where a driver least expects to find a vehicle doing twenty.
And it is genuinely dark. Outside the lit stretches there is no ambient light at all, which changes what either driver could have seen and makes the lighting conditions a fact worth recording on the night rather than reconstructing later.
A vehicle that leaves the lane here does not find a curb. It finds a ditch, a canal bank or a row of trees.
02 The part nobody tells you about the Redland
The trucks moved, and nobody told the people who drive here
The Redland is unincorporated Miami-Dade, so there is no city hall and no local police force. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office responds and writes the report, and on Krome Avenue it may be the Florida Highway Patrol. A request sent to Homestead or Florida City for a Redland crash comes back empty.
Krome Avenue used to be the truck route through the middle of everything. The Florida Department of Transportation built a truck bypass specifically to move that freight off Krome Avenue and onto US-1, away from the historic downtown district in Homestead, and the project was completed on March 30, 2021.
That is a real change in where a truck crash happens, and it is recent enough that plenty of local driving habits predate it. Freight that used to come through the center now takes a different line, which matters when a case turns on what traffic a particular stretch normally carries.
Distance is the other thing that changes a claim here. Homestead Hospital is the nearest emergency department, but it is not a trauma center. Serious trauma goes north: Jackson South Medical Center on SW 152nd Street is the nearest, a Level II center, and the county’s two Level I centers — Ryder at Jackson Memorial and HCA Florida Kendall — are further still. The medical record for one crash ends up in two buildings a long way apart, and both halves have to be collected.
A Redland case belongs to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, and matters from the south of the county are often heard at the South Dade Justice Center in Cutler Bay rather than downtown at West Flagler Street.
03 The roads
Where the claims actually come from
Krome Avenue, State Road 997, four lanes divided with a median, carrying through traffic the length of the agricultural area.
The numbered street grid, two lanes, unlit, no sidewalks and a swale where a shoulder would be.
Field and nursery entrances, where slow vehicles join and leave the road without a turn lane, a signal or any warning to traffic already on it.
Campbell Drive and the US-1 connections, which carry the freight the bypass moved off Krome Avenue in 2021.
The canal-bank roads, narrow, with water on one side and no barrier between the two.
04 What to do now
The things that can only be done in the first two weeks
A checklist, not advice about a particular case. Out here the first two items matter most.
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.
Photograph the light, or the absence of it
On an unlit road what each driver could actually see is the entire argument, and it is the one piece of evidence that cannot be reconstructed afterward. A photograph taken that night, from where the drivers were, answers a question no diagram will.
Record the road surface and the edge
Where the lane ends and the swale begins, what the shoulder is made of, whether there is a marked edge line at all. In a run-off crash that is the whole case and it is repaved without notice.
Note any commercial or agricultural vehicle
A flatbed, a nursery truck, a tractor, a trailer with a company name. That brings a business behind the driver and records that exist for a defined period and are then lawfully destroyed.
Ask the county for the report
This is unincorporated Miami-Dade, so it is the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, or the Florida Highway Patrol on Krome Avenue. Neither Homestead nor Florida City will have 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, and out here that gap turns up more often than it does in the city.
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
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 the Redland alone, and anyone quoting one is estimating. Which of them an unlit two-lane road produces is the part no general page covers.
Car accidents
The bulk of it, and here the pattern is speed differential and darkness rather than congestion: a slow vehicle, an unlit road, and a closing speed nobody judged correctly.
The fourteen-day deadline applies to every one of them, whoever was at fault.
Truck accidents
Agricultural freight moves out of here constantly, and a loaded truck on a two-lane road with no shoulder leaves nowhere for anyone to go.
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.
Workplace accidents
Nursery, packing and grove work produces injuries on someone else’s premises and with someone else’s equipment, including people hurt riding in or driving a work vehicle.
This office does not take workers’ compensation cases. It takes third-party injury claims — against a negligent contractor, a property owner or an equipment maker — which can run alongside a compensation claim rather than instead of it. The right to bring an injury claim in Florida does not depend on immigration status, and status is not an element of the case.
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.
Pedestrian accidents
There are no sidewalks out here, so anyone walking is walking in the lane or in the swale beside it, usually in the dark.
These turn on how fault is divided, and more than half the fault means recovering nothing at all — which is why the lighting evidence matters so much.
06 Also for the Redland
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice. The rest are handled from the Homestead office, each with its own page and its own fee terms.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship. The agricultural workforce here asks these questions constantly, and the answer about an injury claim is not the same as the answer about a case in immigration court.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders, usually heard at the South Dade Justice Center in Cutler Bay rather than downtown.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges, theft and domestic violence, after an arrest by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in the unincorporated area.
Property insurance claims
A denied or underpaid claim on a Redland house, nursery or packing building — agricultural structures are argued about on different terms from a residential roof.
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 Homestead office is at 100 NE 15th Street, Suite 210, which is the closest DAPENALAW office to anywhere in the Redland by a wide margin. The next one is in South Miami.
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. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is why the lighting evidence decides so many of these.
- 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
- Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office recordsThe agency that responds in unincorporated Miami-Dade
- Eleventh Judicial CircuitThe court a Miami-Dade case is filed in
- Miami-Dade Clerk of the CourtsFiling and case search, including the South Dade Justice Center
Questions
Who writes the crash report in the Redland?
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, because this is unincorporated county with no city of its own. On Krome Avenue it may be the Florida Highway Patrol. Neither Homestead nor Florida City will hold a Redland report.
Is there an office in the Redland?
No. The office is at 100 NE 15th Street, Suite 210, in Homestead, which is the closest one to anywhere in the agricultural area. The next is in South Miami.
A tractor or a nursery truck was involved. Does that change anything?
Usually yes. A work vehicle brings a business behind the driver, different insurance, and records — maintenance, dispatch, driver files — that exist for a defined period and are then lawfully destroyed. The request to preserve them has to go out early.
It happened at night on an unlit road.
Then the lighting is evidence, and it is the kind that cannot be recreated. What each driver could see from where they were is usually the entire argument, and a photograph taken that night is worth more than anything produced later.
I was hurt working on a nursery or in a grove. Can you help?
This office does not take workers’ compensation cases. It does take third-party injury claims — against a negligent contractor, a property owner or an equipment manufacturer — and those can run alongside a compensation claim. The right to bring an injury claim in Florida does not depend on immigration status, and status is not an element of the case.
Where would my case be heard?
In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. Matters from the south of the county are often heard at the South Dade Justice Center in Cutler Bay rather than downtown at West Flagler Street. Most injury claims are resolved without a lawsuit at all.
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. The fourteen-day one is the deadline that expires before most people have decided anything.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a crash in the Redland
The Homestead office on Northeast 15th Street is the closest one to the agricultural area, 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.