Where Seminole’s serious crashes happen
Pinellas County averages more than 14,000 crashes and about 120 traffic deaths a year, roughly two people a day killed or seriously injured, and pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists are 61 percent of the dead. Forward Pinellas’s high-injury network runs through Seminole on these roads:
- Park Boulevard (SR 694) from 113th Street to Seminole Boulevard and on to Indian Shores: the main route to the beaches, six lanes past Seminole City Center and the shopping plazas, with left-turn and pedestrian crashes at 113th Street, Ridge Road and Seminole Boulevard.
- Seminole Boulevard (Alternate US-19) from Bay Pines to Largo: the county’s old highway, now six lanes of retail, with pedestrians crossing between distant signals and the Pinellas Trail alongside.
- 113th Street and Ridge Road: the north-south connectors through the subdivisions, with school traffic, stop-controlled side streets and golf carts.
- Walsingham Road and 102nd Avenue: the east-west routes to Largo and the Belcher Road corridor, two and four lanes carrying beach and commuter traffic.
- Bay Pines Boulevard and the Bay Pines VA approaches: hospital and veterans’ traffic meeting the beach road, with the bridge to Madeira Beach beyond.
- Indian Rocks Road and Oakhurst Road: the narrow roads to the beaches, with bicycles, pedestrians and the occasional head-on crash.
If you were hurt on one of these roads, cameras, event data and witnesses exist for days, not months. Contact us as soon as you can so we can preserve them.
Personal injury cases we handle in Seminole
Car accidents
Park Boulevard left turns, Seminole Boulevard rear-end chains, 113th Street intersection crashes and uninsured drivers. Florida’s no-fault rules, the permanent-injury threshold and comparative fault decide these cases, and we explain each below. See the Florida car accident practice page.
Truck and commercial vehicle accidents
Delivery fleets on Park and Seminole Boulevards and construction trucks serving the beach rebuilds. These cases turn on federal hours-of-service and maintenance records and on reaching the truck’s data before it is overwritten. Truck accidents.
Motorcycle accidents
Riders are a small share of Pinellas traffic and a large share of its deaths. Drivers who “didn’t see” a motorcycle on Park Boulevard or the beach roads are still responsible for the injuries they cause. Motorcycle accidents.
Pedestrian, bicycle and golf-cart accidents
The Pinellas Trail, the beach-bound cyclists and the golf carts of Seminole’s neighborhoods share roads with six-lane traffic. Pedestrians and cyclists have the same right to recover as anyone else, and your own PIP policy covers you on foot. Pedestrian accidents.
Rideshare, hit-and-run and drunk-driving crashes
Uber and Lyft crashes, hit-and-run claims paid through uninsured motorist coverage, and drunk-driving cases that can include a dram shop claim against the bar.
Slip and fall and premises injuries
Seminole City Center, the grocery and big-box stores along Park and Seminole Boulevards, restaurants, apartment complexes and parking lots. Florida requires proof the business knew or should have known of the hazard, and surveillance video is overwritten within days. Slip and fall accidents.
Negligent security
Assaults and shootings at apartment complexes, gas stations, bars and motels where the owner ignored known crime and skipped basic lighting, cameras or staffing. Negligent security.
Dog bites
Strict liability for the owner, usually paid by homeowner’s insurance. Dog bites.
Wrongful death
When a crash or a fall takes a family member, Florida’s Wrongful Death Act allows the estate and the surviving spouse, children and parents to recover lost support, funeral and medical expenses and the loss of companionship. Wrongful death.
Insurance and PIP disputes
Carriers that cut off benefits, deny treatment as unrelated or lowball uninsured motorist claims. Insurance claims and personal injury protection.
The Florida law that decides a Seminole injury claim
Crashes involving the VA. A crash with a VA vehicle, or a fall on VA property at Bay Pines, is a federal claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act: an administrative claim must be filed with the agency within two years, and suit follows only after the agency acts. The deadlines and procedure are different from a claim against the city or county, and we handle both.
Two years to file. Florida’s statute of limitations for negligence is two years from the injury (Florida Statutes § 95.11), the same as for wrongful death. Claims against the City of Seminole, Pinellas County, PSTA or a state agency carry separate notice requirements under § 768.28 and should be opened early.
Modified comparative negligence. Under § 768.81 a jury’s finding that you were 50 percent or less at fault reduces your award by that share; 51 percent or more bars recovery. Insurers build your share in recorded statements. Do not give one without counsel.
No-fault first. Florida requires $10,000 of personal injury protection on every registered car (§ 627.736). It pays 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages up to that limit, only if you are seen by a medical provider within 14 days, and only $2,500 of it unless a physician documents an emergency medical condition.
Pain and suffering needs a permanent injury. Non-economic damages against the at-fault driver require proof of a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant scarring, or death (§ 627.737). Consistent treatment and imaging supply that proof.
Uninsured drivers. Florida does not require bodily injury coverage and roughly one driver in five carries none. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy, and on the policies of relatives in your household, is often the largest source of recovery in a Seminole crash. We read every policy in the household before we value a case.
Premises and security cases. A business owes its customers reasonable care; for a fall on a transitory substance, § 768.0755 requires proof the business knew or should have known of it, which is why video, inspection logs and incident reports matter. For negligent security, prior crime at and around the property is the evidence, and Pinellas County’s public records make it available.
What changed in 2023. Juries now hear what was paid or owed for treatment rather than billed charges; letters of protection are disclosed with the referral; and bad-faith claims against insurers require the insurer to have been given a fair chance to pay. Cases built correctly from the first appointment do well under these rules.
What you can recover. Medical expenses past and future, lost wages and earning capacity, out-of-pocket costs, property damage, and, where the injury is permanent, pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life. Florida places no cap on these damages in an ordinary negligence case. A spouse may claim loss of consortium.
Seminole resources after an accident
In an emergency, call 911. These are the agencies and facilities a Seminole injury claim runs through.
Courthouse
Pinellas County civil cases are heard in the Sixth Judicial Circuit, at the Clearwater Courthouse, 315 Court Street, Clearwater, FL 33756, or the St. Petersburg Judicial Building, 545 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, depending on the division the case is assigned to. It is the same circuit that hears our Pasco County cases. Most of our cases settle without a lawsuit; the ones that do not are filed in one of these two buildings.
Crash reports and police
Seminole contracts its policing to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, 10750 Ulmerton Road, Largo, FL 33778, whose deputies investigate crashes on city streets and in the unincorporated areas around it; crashes on Park Boulevard and Seminole Boulevard sometimes fall to Florida Highway Patrol Troop C. Reports are available to the people involved through FLHSMV’s Florida Crash Portal within a few days; we obtain them for every client, along with body-camera and dash-camera video.
Hospitals
HCA Florida Largo Hospital, 201 14th Street SW, Largo, FL 33770, the closest full hospital; Bay Pines VA Healthcare System, 10000 Bay Pines Boulevard, Bay Pines, FL 33744, for veterans; BayCare Morton Plant Hospital, 300 Pinellas Street, Clearwater, FL 33756; HCA Florida Northside Hospital, 6000 49th Street North, St. Petersburg, FL 33709; and, for the most serious injuries, Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital, 701 6th Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, a Level II trauma center.
Fire and EMS
Seminole Fire Rescue inside the city; Sunstar Paramedics is the countywide ambulance service, and its run reports are part of every file we build.
If you were treated at any of these facilities after someone else’s negligence, keep every discharge paper and bill; they are the first documents we ask for.
Results for injured clients in Pinellas County and across Florida
Kemp Law Group has recovered over $400 million in settlements since 2008. Recoveries confirmed from the firm’s case records include:
- $2,415,000 for a motorcycle rider with a traumatic brain injury struck by a car
- $2,000,000 for the family of a driver killed by a commercial carrier’s truck
- $2,000,000 for a 64-year-old pedestrian struck while crossing the road
- $1,500,000 for a driver rear-ended in stopped traffic by a commercial truck whose driver fell asleep
- $1,250,000 for a scooter passenger hit by an uninsured hit-and-run driver, recovered through a family member’s uninsured motorist coverage
- $1,010,000 for a bicyclist hit by the opened door of a rideshare vehicle on a St. Petersburg street
- $975,000 for a passenger in a rental car struck broadside, recovered from the at-fault driver’s policy and a $5 million umbrella
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a particular outcome. See more case results.
Who handles your Seminole case
Stacy Kemp Ferrari founded Kemp Law Group in 2008 and owns it today. A graduate of Stetson University College of Law in Pinellas County, admitted to The Florida Bar in 2008, she has spent her career representing injured people in Pinellas, Pasco and the rest of Tampa Bay. Cases that need a courtroom are prepared by the litigation team under managing litigation attorney Ian Boettcher. From your first call, a member of our team takes the time to understand what happened, and an attorney reviews every case and stays involved from intake to resolution.
The firm’s Trinity office holds a 4.9-star rating across more than 900 Google reviews, many from clients in Seminole, Largo, Indian Rocks Beach and Madeira Beach.
Seminole personal injury questions
Do you have an office in Seminole?
Our office is at 11567 Trinity Boulevard in Trinity, about 40 minutes north. We meet Seminole clients by appointment, at home or in the hospital, and handle most of the case by phone, text and video.
How long do I have to file a claim in Pinellas County?
Two years from the date of injury for negligence and wrongful death claims. Claims against the City of Seminole, Pinellas County, PSTA or a state agency have earlier notice deadlines, and a claim involving a VA vehicle or VA property goes through a federal administrative process first, so call sooner if a government vehicle or property was involved.
What if the insurer says I was partly at fault?
Florida reduces your recovery by your share of fault and bars it entirely at 51 percent or more. Adjusters assign fault to limit payouts; we investigate independently, pull camera footage and vehicle data, and advise clients not to give recorded statements before speaking with us.
The driver who hit me had no insurance.
We look first to the uninsured motorist coverage on your policy and on the policies of relatives you live with, then to any other responsible party: an employer, a vehicle owner, a bar that over-served a drunk driver.
I was hit on a bike or in a golf cart. Is that a case?
Often, yes. A driver who hits a cyclist, pedestrian or golf cart on a city street or at a trail crossing is held to the same duty of care as anywhere else, and your household’s PIP and uninsured motorist coverage can apply even when you were not in a car.
Where would my case be filed?
In the Sixth Judicial Circuit, at the Clearwater Courthouse or the St. Petersburg Judicial Building. Most cases settle without a lawsuit, and most lawsuits settle before trial; we prepare every case as though a Pinellas County jury will hear it.
What does a Seminole personal injury lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery set by Florida Bar rules and explained in writing before you sign, and you owe no fees and no costs unless we win. The consultation is free.
Talk to a Seminole personal injury lawyer today
The insurer already has adjusters, investigators and lawyers on your case. You should have the same. Call or text 727-847-4878 or contact us online for a free consultation, 24 hours a day. We will tell you honestly whether you have a case, what it is likely worth, and what happens next, and you owe no fees and no costs unless we win.
Kemp Law Group, 11567 Trinity Boulevard, Trinity, FL 34655. Serving Seminole, Largo, Bay Pines, Indian Rocks Beach, Indian Shores, Madeira Beach, Redington and all of mid-Pinellas County and the beaches, with meetings by appointment and home and hospital visits anywhere in Tampa Bay.
The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
