4.9 42 Google reviews
St. Petersburg · Pinellas County, Florida
You were hurt. The clock started that day.
Waggener Law is the office of Chris Waggener, a personal injury attorney in St. Petersburg. He handles car accident, slip and fall and wrongful death cases for people across Pinellas County — and the first conversation about yours costs nothing.
Chris tries cases. In 2024 that included Giannikos v. City of Clearwater, where a Pinellas County jury returned a verdict of $38.5 million — the seventh-largest personal injury verdict in Florida that year.
Life Member — Million Dollar Advocates Forum · Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum
Every case is different. A past result does not predict or guarantee the outcome of yours.
The first conversation is free and there is no obligation. No attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery — case costs are separate, and explained in plain terms before you sign anything.
Florida gives most injury claims two years, and your no-fault medical benefits require care within 14 days. Both of those are explained below, with the statute.
The signature of this office
The Florida clock, from the day it happened
Almost every personal injury case in Florida is decided by things that happen — or fail to happen — long before anyone files anything. These are the dates that matter, with the statute beside each one so you can check us.
-
Hour 0
Get looked at, and say where it hurts
Adrenaline hides injuries for a day or two. The gap between the crash and the first medical record is the single most common thing an insurer uses to argue you were not really hurt.
Practical, not statutory
-
14 days
The Florida rule that ends most PIP claims
Florida’s no-fault statute pays your initial medical benefits only if you get initial services and care within 14 days of the crash. Miss that window and the $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection you paid for is simply not available.
Fla. Stat. §627.736(1)(a)
-
30 days
The insurer’s own clock starts
Once a PIP insurer receives written notice of a covered loss, the statute gives it 30 days to pay or to deny. Silence past 30 days is itself a fact worth recording.
Fla. Stat. §627.736(4)(b)
-
Weeks 1–8
Evidence that expires
Store and parking-lot video is routinely overwritten in days. Skid marks wash away, a damaged vehicle gets repaired or sold for salvage, and witnesses move. A preservation letter has to go out before any of that happens, not after.
Practical, not statutory
-
6 months
If a government vehicle or property is involved
A claim against the state, a county, a city or an agency has its own track: written notice must be presented, and the statute puts limits on what may be recovered from a government body at all.
Fla. Stat. §768.28
-
2 years
The deadline that ends the case
For a negligence cause of action accruing on or after 24 March 2023, Florida gives you two years to file suit — not the four years most websites and most people still believe. Wrongful death was already two.
Fla. Stat. §95.11(4)(a), §95.11(4)(e)
General information about Florida law, current as of 2026. Not legal advice, and not a substitute for advice about your own facts.
Found on almost no other Florida injury site
Two Florida laws changed on 24 March 2023. Both of them can end a claim.
If you read an older article, or a law firm page nobody has updated, you are reading rules that no longer apply to a new case.
Four years became two
Florida’s statute of limitations for a general negligence action used to be four years. For causes of action accruing on or after 24 March 2023 it is two years. Two years sounds long while you are still in physical therapy. It is not.
Fla. Stat. §95.11(4)(a)
Being partly at fault can now bar you entirely
Florida used to be a pure comparative negligence state: if you were 70 per cent responsible you still recovered 30 per cent. Now, in most negligence actions, a person found more than 50 per cent at fault recovers nothing at all. Below that line, your recovery is still reduced by your share.
Fla. Stat. §768.81(6) — medical negligence actions are excepted
Why this matters more than it sounds
The 51 per cent bar changes what the other side is trying to prove. It is no longer only about how badly you were hurt; it is about shifting enough blame onto you to switch your case off completely. That is why what you say at the scene, in a recorded statement, and on social media now carries more weight than it did three years ago.
What this office handles
A short list, on purpose.
Chris Waggener focuses on injury and death cases caused by someone else’s carelessness. Work that falls outside that gets referred out rather than taken on.
Car and truck crashes
No-fault, the 14-day rule, the injury threshold that decides whether you can step outside PIP at all, and why uninsured motorist coverage matters so much in this state.
Slip, trip and fall on someone else’s property
Since 2010 Florida makes the injured person prove the business knew about the spill, or should have. That one statute is why these cases are won or lost in the first week.
Wrongful death
Florida’s Wrongful Death Act runs through the estate, not the family directly. Who may file, who counts as a survivor, and what the two-year deadline does.
Traumatic brain injury, pedestrian and bicycle collisions, and uninsured or underinsured motorist disputes are handled within those three areas.
Reputation
Forty-two people wrote something in public. We are not going to retype it here.
A testimonial typed onto a law firm’s own website is worth almost nothing. Anyone can write one. The Florida Bar also has real rules about how a lawyer may use client statements in advertising, and the honest way to handle that is to point you at the source instead of the summary.
So here is the whole claim this website makes about reputation, and the date we measured it. Read the reviews on Google yourself; they are not ours to edit.
A case this office tried
A jury returned $38.5 million against the City of Clearwater.
In Giannikos v. City of Clearwater (No. 22-000424-CI, Sixth Judicial Circuit, Pinellas County), a Pinellas County jury returned a verdict of $38,496,781.68 — the seventh-largest personal injury verdict in Florida in 2024. Waggener Law tried the case with Holland Law.
The claim arose from a pedestrian struck at a Clearwater intersection. Because the defendant is a city, Florida law limits what a government must pay on a judgment without an act of the Legislature, and the matter is now before the Florida Legislature on a claims bill.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. This is one case, decided on its own facts and its own evidence. Nothing here predicts what any other case is worth or how it will end.
Free case review
Talk to the lawyer who would handle the case.
Not an intake centre, not a call-screener working from a script. Tell us what happened and you will get a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing.
- Call
- (727) 685-8000
- Office
- 1700 66th St N, Suite 203
St. Petersburg, FL 33710 - Hours
- Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Phones are answered 24 hours a day, every day.
Pinellas County
An office you can drive to.
Waggener Law works out of 1700 66th St N, Suite 203 in St. Petersburg. Pinellas is a small, dense county — a crash on 66th Street, a fall in a Largo grocery store and a collision on the Bayside Bridge are all a short drive from the same courthouse system. Pinellas County sits in Florida’s Sixth Judicial Circuit, which it shares with Pasco.
Where a case is filed depends on what it is worth: Florida county courts handle civil claims up to $50,000, circuit courts take everything above that, and small claims covers disputes up to $8,000 (Fla. Stat. §34.01).
Communities served
- St. Petersburg
- Gulfport
- South Pasadena
- Tierra Verde
- Lealman
- Kenneth City
- Bay Pines
- Seminole
- Largo
- Pinellas Park
- Belleair
- Belleair Bluffs
- St. Pete Beach
- Treasure Island
- Madeira Beach
- Redington Shores
- Indian Shores
- Indian Rocks Beach
- Clearwater Beach
- Clearwater
- Dunedin
- Safety Harbor
- Palm Harbor
- Oldsmar
- Tarpon Springs
St. Petersburg personal injury lawyer → (one of 25 communities served)
Straight answers
Questions people actually ask
How long do I have to file an injury case in Florida?
For a negligence claim that accrued on or after 24 March 2023, two years from the date of the injury (Fla. Stat. §95.11(4)(a)). Older claims may still fall under the previous four-year rule, and a claim against a government body follows a different track under §768.28. Because the answer depends on the exact date and the exact defendant, treat any deadline you read online as a reason to call, not as an answer.
Do I have a case if I was partly at fault?
Possibly. Florida now uses modified comparative negligence: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and a person found more than 50 per cent at fault in most negligence actions recovers nothing (Fla. Stat. §768.81(6)). Whether you were at fault, and by how much, is a question of evidence — not something the other driver’s insurer gets to decide alone.
What does it cost to call?
Nothing. The initial case review is free and there is no obligation. If this office takes the case it is on a contingency fee, meaning an attorney’s fee is charged only out of a recovery. Case costs and expenses are handled separately and are explained in the written agreement before you sign anything.
Will I be talking to a lawyer or to a call centre?
To this office. Waggener Law is a small firm in St. Petersburg, which is the point of it. If the case is not one this office should handle, you will be told that on the first call rather than signed up and passed along.
Should I give the other insurance company a recorded statement?
Talk to a lawyer first. You generally have obligations to cooperate with your own insurer that you do not have to the other side’s. Since the 2023 comparative-fault change, a recorded statement is one of the main places a share of blame gets attached to an injured person.
What should I bring or send?
Whatever you already have: the crash report or exchange-of-information slip, photographs, the name of anywhere you have been treated, your own auto policy declarations page, and anything the insurer has sent you. If you have none of it, call anyway — that is a normal starting point.
How the fee works
The first conversation is free. After that this office works on a contingency fee: an attorney’s fee is charged only out of a recovery, so if there is no recovery there is no attorney’s fee. Case costs and expenses are a separate thing from the fee — filing fees, records, retained witnesses and the like — and how those are handled is set out in the written fee agreement before you sign it. Ask about them on the first call; you should never have to guess.