Florida law gives you the right to recover compensation when someone else’s carelessness causes you physical harm. That right applies whether the harm came from a driver who ran a light on Fourth Street, a dog that got loose in a neighbor’s yard or a wet grocery store floor left unmarked for an hour.
A St. Petersburg personal injury lawyer at Shapiro Delgado figures out what kind of case you have, what it is worth and who has to pay for it, so you can spend your energy on getting better instead of researching statutes. Our team works out of Sarasota and Palmetto. A St. Petersburg personal injury attorney from our office is available the same day you call, not weeks into a backlog.
If something happened to you or someone you love anywhere in Pinellas County or nearby, call (941) 954-4000 for a free conversation about what your situation actually involves. There is no obligation attached to that first call, and no pressure at all to decide anything on the spot.
The legal definition is broader than most people expect. Any time someone else’s carelessness causes physical harm, a personal injury claim can potentially exist, whether that carelessness came from a driver, a property owner, a dog owner, a boat operator or a company that made a defective product.
St. Petersburg’s mix of waterfront activity, tourist traffic and dense residential neighborhoods produces a wider range of these cases than a purely inland city sees. A jet ski collision off Fort De Soto is a personal injury case. A fall on a poorly maintained staircase near the Dali Museum waterfront is a personal injury case.
So is an injury from a rideshare ride gone wrong or a bicycle wreck near Snell Isle. The common thread is not the setting. It is whether someone else’s failure to act with reasonable care caused the harm, and whether that harm can be tied back to their conduct with real evidence.
Florida assigns fault by percentage, and that percentage decides how much you can recover. Under Florida Statute 768.81, a person found more than 50 percent responsible for their own injury cannot recover any personal injury compensation at all. Below that line, whatever you recover gets reduced by your own share of fault.
This applies across nearly every type of personal injury claim, not just car accidents. A grocery store might argue you were looking at your phone instead of watching the floor. A dog owner might argue you provoked the animal beforehand.
A boat operator might argue you were standing somewhere on the vessel you should not have been. In each case, the fault percentage becomes a real fight, and the evidence gathered in the first days after an injury usually decides how that fight goes.
Our office does not narrow its focus to one type of injury claim. The range below reflects what actually comes through our door, and it tends to surprise people who assumed a personal injury firm only handles car crashes.
This breadth matters because insurance structures differ between personal injury case types, and a firm that only knows one corner of personal injury law tends to undervalue the others. A firm built around car accidents alone may not know how a homeowner’s insurance policy responds to a dog bite claim. That gap shows up in the final settlement number.
Premises liability claims, injuries that happen on someone else’s property, come with their own rules. If you slipped on a spill inside a business, Florida Statute 768.0755 requires you to prove the business knew, or reasonably should have known, about the hazard and failed to fix it in time.
That knowledge requirement is the hardest part of these claims. Surveillance footage often gets overwritten within days, and incident reports written by the business itself tend to favor the business. Requesting and preserving that evidence quickly, sometimes within 24 hours, can be the difference between a claim that holds up and one that does not.
This standard applies differently outside of business settings. A fall in a private rental, an apartment common area or a residential pool deck generally follows ordinary premises rules rather than the business specific statute, which changes what needs to be proven and how the claim gets built from the start.
Florida treats dog bites differently from most negligence claims. Under Florida Statute 767.04, a dog owner is generally liable for a bite that happens in a public place or while you are lawfully on private property, regardless of whether the dog ever showed aggression before. There is no “one bite” exception the way some other states allow.
This standard is strict, meaning the owner can be held responsible without any proof that the dog was known to be dangerous. It still gets challenged. Owners sometimes argue the injured person provoked the dog or was trespassing at the time.
A posted warning sign can also limit liability under certain conditions, though that defense has real limits and does not apply when a young child is involved.
These details rarely make headlines, but they decide real cases, which is part of why even a claim that looks straightforward benefits from a second set of eyes before you accept a homeowner’s insurance offer.
Florida generally gives injured people two years from the date of the incident to file a negligence-based lawsuit, under Florida Statute 95.11. That window shortened from four years after a 2023 change to state law, and plenty of people still assume the older, longer deadline applies. Missing this deadline generally ends the right to recover anything through the court system, no matter how clear the other party’s fault was.
Some claims run on different clocks entirely. Wrongful death cases generally follow their own two-year period measured from the date of death rather than the date of injury. Claims against a government entity, such as a city-owned vehicle or a public park, are governed by Florida Statute 768.28 and involve a separate, much shorter notice requirement that has to be satisfied before a lawsuit can even be filed.
None of these exceptions are obvious from the outside, which is why early legal review matters in the days right after an injury. If you are unsure which deadline applies to your situation, call us at (941) 954-4000 and we will tell you where you stand.
Compensation in these cases falls broadly into two categories. Economic damages cover the costs you can put a number on directly, including medical bills, lost income, and property damage. Non-economic damages cover the harder-to-quantify impact, including pain, physical limitation and the disruption an injury causes to daily life.
The exact mix depends heavily on the type of case and the severity of the injury. An injury with lasting effects carries a different value than one a person fully recovers from within a few weeks, even where both claims began the same way.
Building an accurate picture requires waiting until your medical treatment has run its course, not settling based on how you feel in the first week. Accepting a check too early is one of the more common and costly mistakes we see, because it closes the door on additional compensation even if your condition changes later.
No. Our firm works on contingency, which means we only get paid if we recover money for you, and there is no fee for an initial consultation. This structure exists specifically so that cost is not a barrier to getting a fair look at your case, regardless of how serious or minor the injury seems at first.
Most personal injury firms in Florida operate this way, but the percentage taken and the costs charged along the way can vary between firms. It is worth asking directly how a fee arrangement works before signing anything, since the details matter more than the general concept, and a written explanation up front avoids confusion later when a settlement finally arrives.
We built this firm to handle the full range of personal injury claims rather than steering every caller toward whatever type of case happens to be trendy for advertising. Adam Shapiro and our team treat a dog bite claim with the same seriousness as a multi-vehicle crash, because the person on the other end of the phone should get that regardless of case type. That consistency comes from working across every category of claim listed above, not just the ones that generate the most calls.
A few things set our approach apart.
If you are not sure whether what happened to you qualifies as a personal injury case, that uncertainty is common, and a first conversation with our office is meant to resolve it. We handle claims for people in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County and the surrounding Gulf Coast communities, and we can tell you within one conversation whether you have something worth pursuing. Call (941) 954-4000 to get that answer today.
These are the questions we hear most often from people deciding whether to pursue an injury claim in St. Petersburg.
Yes. Florida law generally applies to injuries that happen within the state regardless of where you live, and we regularly handle claims for visitors injured during a trip to the beaches, the waterfront or anywhere else in the area. Most of the process can be handled remotely, so you will not need to travel back for routine steps in your claim.
Multiple parties can share liability in the same personal injury claim, such as a property owner and a maintenance contractor, or a driver and their employer. Identifying every responsible party often increases the total compensation available, since each party’s insurance policy may have separate limits that can be pursued.
Yes, and the order matters less than the timing. Prompt medical care protects your health and creates a documented record connecting your injury to the incident, which strengthens a claim regardless of when you eventually speak with an attorney about your options.
Nothing. Our initial review of your situation is free, and there is no obligation to move forward afterward, regardless of what we find or what you decide to do next. If we take your case, our fee comes out of the recovery rather than out of your pocket, so there is nothing to pay while the claim is pending.
Claims against government entities involve a separate notice process with tighter deadlines than a typical negligence claim, so these cases benefit from especially prompt legal review before that shorter window closes. That notice has to be filed and processed before a lawsuit can begin, which makes the timeline tighter than it looks from the outside.
Often yes, though what you said in that statement can matter quite a bit. Sharing exactly what was discussed with your attorney early lets us address any issues before they affect your case, rather than discovering a problem after negotiations are already underway.
You do not need to know the legal name for what happened to you before calling. Contact Shapiro Delgado, describe your situation in plain terms, and let our team sort out the rest, whether it involves a car, a dog, a wet floor or a boat. Call (941) 954-4000 or reach out online for a free, honest conversation about what comes next.
