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St. Petersburg, Pinellas County
St. Petersburg personal injury lawyer
Waggener Law’s office is at 1700 66th St N, Suite 203 in St. Petersburg. If you were hurt here — in a crash, on someone else’s property, or by someone else’s carelessness — you can be sitting across a desk from the lawyer who would handle it.
Cases from every one of these communities are handled from this same St. Petersburg office — the office whose trial work includes a $38.5 million jury verdict returned in Pinellas County in 2024.
Past results do not predict or guarantee a similar outcome.
Local, specifically
What being a St. Petersburg case actually changes
Most “city + lawyer” pages are the same page with the city name swapped. Here is what genuinely differs when an injury happens in St. Petersburg rather than somewhere else in Florida.
- Your court is the Sixth Judicial Circuit. Pinellas County shares it with Pasco. County court hears civil claims up to $50,000; circuit court hears the rest (Fla. Stat. §34.01). Which one you are in changes the pace of a case and the procedure around it.
- Your crash report is confidential for 60 days. Under Fla. Stat. §316.066(2), reports are released during that period only to the people involved, their lawyers, their insurers and a short statutory list. If a letter arrives from a stranger the week after your crash, that is worth noticing.
- Which agency responded matters. A crash inside city limits is usually St. Petersburg Police; on the interstates and state roads it is more often the Florida Highway Patrol; elsewhere in the county the Sheriff’s Office. They are different records systems, and the report is requested from whichever one investigated.
- Government defendants are everywhere in a city. A city vehicle, a transit bus, a municipal sidewalk or a county-maintained road puts the claim under Fla. Stat. §768.28, with its written notice requirement and its limits.
The signature of this office
After a St. Petersburg accident, in order
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.
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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
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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)
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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)
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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
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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
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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.
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.
The neighbouring pages
Pinellas is small. The office is not far from you.
From 66th Street North it is a short drive to most of the county. This page is one of twenty-four written for individual Pinellas communities; the others cover the beaches, the mid-county cities and the north end.
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)
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.
Straight answers
St. Petersburg questions
Where would a St. Petersburg injury case actually be filed?
Pinellas County is part of Florida’s Sixth Judicial Circuit, shared with Pasco County. Whether a civil case is heard in county or circuit court depends on the amount in controversy: county courts handle claims up to $50,000 and circuit courts everything above (Fla. Stat. §34.01). Small claims covers up to $8,000.
How do I get my St. Petersburg crash report?
Florida crash reports are held confidential for 60 days after they are filed, released in that window only to the parties involved, their legal representatives, their insurers and a few others the statute lists (Fla. Stat. §316.066(2)). You are entitled to your own; a stranger is not.
I was hit by a city or county vehicle. Is that different?
Yes. Claims against the state or its subdivisions — a city, a county, a transit authority, a school board — run under Fla. Stat. §768.28, which requires written notice of the claim and places limits on what may be recovered from a government body. Do not treat it like an ordinary claim.
Does this office only take St. Petersburg cases?
No. The office is in St. Petersburg and the practice covers Pinellas County and Florida generally. Being nearby simply makes meeting easier.
How long do I have to bring a St. Petersburg injury claim?
Two years from the date of the injury for a negligence action accruing on or after 24 March 2023 (Fla. Stat. §95.11(4)(a)), and two years for wrongful death (§95.11(4)(e)). Government claims add their own notice track under §768.28.
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.