Key Takeaways
- Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers – St. Petersburg office at 840 Beach Dr NE, A+ BBB rating, 1,200+ five-star Google reviews, and attorney Mark S. Roman is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer, a credential held by fewer than 2% of Florida attorneys.
- Dolman Law Group – Downtown St. Petersburg firm led by Matthew Dolman, recognized as a Florida Super Lawyer, with a practice built around litigating serious vehicle and trucking injury claims.
- Emerson Straw Injury & Accident Lawyers – St. Petersburg-based firm founded by Matthew Emerson and Wesley Straw, handling truck, car, and catastrophic injury cases across Pinellas County.
- Kinney Fernandez & Boire (KFB Law) – Tampa Bay firm with a St. Petersburg office that focuses specifically on the federal trucking regulations and multi-party liability that make these cases different from a typical car crash.
Truck traffic through St. Petersburg is heavier than most residents realize until they’re stuck behind it. Delivery trucks and box trucks cut through downtown to reach the waterfront business district, tractor-trailers move steadily along 4th Street N and 34th Street to serve the retail corridors, and freight bound for the Port of Tampa Bay and the Skyway Bridge funnels through I-275 and I-375 around the clock. Add in the beach traffic on Gandy Boulevard and the industrial stretch of Ulmerton Road near the airport, and it’s not surprising that commercial vehicle wrecks in Pinellas County tend to produce some of the most serious injuries a personal injury attorney sees.
A truck accident case is rarely as simple as it looks on the police report. A loaded commercial truck can weigh twenty to thirty times what a passenger car does, the driver may be governed by federal hours-of-service rules, and the truck itself is often owned by one company while the trailer is leased from another and the freight belongs to a third. Sorting out who’s actually responsible, and making sure the evidence that proves it doesn’t disappear, is a different job than handling a routine fender-bender. Below is a look at firms that St. Petersburg residents turn to for exactly that kind of case.
At a Glance
| Firm | Best Known For / Focus | Location |
| Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers | Commercial truck, semi-truck, and catastrophic injury litigation; Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer on staff | St. Petersburg, FL |
| Dolman Law Group | Serious vehicle and trucking injury litigation; Super Lawyers-recognized lead counsel | St. Petersburg, FL |
| Emerson Straw Injury & Accident Lawyers | Truck, car, and catastrophic injury claims across Pinellas County | St. Petersburg, FL |
| Kinney Fernandez & Boire (KFB Law) | Federal trucking regulation and multi-party commercial liability cases | St. Petersburg, FL |
1. Roman Austin Personal Injury Lawyers
Type: Personal injury and truck accident law firm
Focus: Commercial truck, semi-truck, and catastrophic vehicle injury claims
Location: 840 Beach Dr NE Suite 202, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Roman Austin has built its truck accident practice around a simple idea: these cases are won or lost on evidence that starts disappearing the moment the wreck happens. Electronic logging device data, dash cam footage, and a trucking company’s maintenance and hiring records can all be gone or overwritten within weeks if no one moves to preserve them, so the firm’s process is built to move fast and identify every party who might share liability, from the driver to the carrier to whoever loaded the trailer. Attorney Mark S. Roman is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer, a distinction the Florida Bar grants to fewer than 2% of attorneys in the state, and the firm has represented clients hurt in rear-end collisions with semi-trucks, T-bone crashes caused by trucks running red lights, and multi-vehicle pileups triggered by commercial drivers. One published result includes a $250,000 recovery for a client rear-ended by a large semi-truck after stopping for a school bus. The firm holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and has accumulated more than 1,200 five-star Google reviews from past clients.
Website: romanaustin.com/st-petersburg-truck-accident-lawyer
2. Dolman Law Group
Type: Personal injury law firm
Focus: Vehicle collision and trucking injury litigation
Location: 1663 1st Ave S, St. Petersburg, FL 33712
Dolman Law Group has a long-running presence in the St. Petersburg legal community, with founding attorney Matthew Dolman recognized as a Florida Super Lawyer and a background that includes civil trial and products liability work going back to 2004. The firm’s truck accident work sits alongside a broader personal injury practice, and it takes on cases that require litigating rather than settling quickly, which matters when a trucking company’s insurer is inclined to fight a claim rather than pay it. Clients dealing with a serious commercial vehicle injury in Pinellas County often end up comparing this firm precisely because of that trial-tested reputation.
Website: dolmanlaw.com/truck-accident-attorneys/florida/st-petersburg
3. Emerson Straw Injury & Accident Lawyers
Type: Personal injury law firm
Focus: Truck accidents, car accidents, and catastrophic injury claims
Location: 1101 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Emerson Straw is a locally founded firm, started by attorneys Matthew Emerson and Wesley Straw, with its main office right in downtown St. Petersburg. The firm handles truck accident claims as part of a wider injury practice that also covers motorcycle wrecks and wrongful death, and it markets itself on staying hands-on with clients through the evidence-gathering and negotiation process rather than handing cases off. For residents who want a firm headquartered in the city itself rather than commuting in from elsewhere in Tampa Bay, that local footprint is often the deciding factor.
Website: emersonstraw.com/st-petersburg-truck-accident-lawyer
4. Kinney Fernandez & Boire (KFB Law)
Type: Personal injury law firm
Focus: Federal trucking regulation and multi-party commercial vehicle liability
Location: 9600 Koger Blvd #239, St. Petersburg, FL 33702
KFB Law leans into the regulatory side of trucking cases more explicitly than most general personal injury firms, emphasizing the federal motor carrier rules that govern driver hours, vehicle maintenance, and cargo loading. Attorneys Marcus Fernandez and Manny Fernandez bring more than three decades of combined experience to a practice that’s built specifically around untangling who’s liable when a driver, a trucking company, and an insurer are all pointing at each other. For a case where the dispute is less about the crash itself and more about which company should be paying for it, that regulatory focus is a real asset.
Website: kfblaw.com/st-petersburg-truck-accident-attorney
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a truck accident claim in Florida?
Florida law changed in 2023, and most negligence-based injury claims, including truck accident cases, now have a two-year statute of limitations from the date of the crash rather than the previous four years. Missing that window generally means losing the right to sue entirely, so it’s worth having a case reviewed well before that deadline.
Who can be held liable in a St. Petersburg truck accident?
It depends on the facts, but potential parties include the truck driver, the trucking or carrier company, the company that owns the trailer if it’s leased separately, whoever loaded the cargo if improper loading contributed to the crash, and occasionally a maintenance contractor if a mechanical failure was involved. Commercial trucking cases frequently involve more than one liable party at once.
Does Florida’s comparative negligence rule affect truck accident cases?
Yes. Florida uses a modified comparative negligence system, and since the 2023 changes, a person found more than 50% at fault for their own injury is barred from recovering damages at all. For everyone else, any recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault, which makes an early, thorough investigation into what actually caused the crash especially important.
What evidence is important in a semi-truck or commercial vehicle crash?
Electronic logging device data showing the driver’s hours, the truck’s onboard black box data, dash cam or nearby surveillance footage, the carrier’s maintenance and inspection records, and the driver’s qualification file are all commonly relevant. Much of this evidence can be routinely overwritten or discarded within weeks, which is why attorneys often send a preservation letter to the trucking company early in a case.
Do most truck accident claims in Pinellas County settle, or do they go to trial?
Most personal injury claims, including truck accident cases, resolve through settlement before trial. That said, commercial trucking insurers tend to have more resources to contest a claim than a typical individual driver’s insurer, so having an attorney who is genuinely prepared to litigate, not just negotiate, can affect how seriously an early settlement offer is made.
Final Thoughts
Truck accident cases in St. Petersburg tend to be more complicated than they first appear, largely because a single crash can implicate a driver, a carrier, a leasing company, and sometimes a third-party loader all at once, each with its own insurance coverage and its own legal team. The federal regulations that govern commercial trucking add another layer that doesn’t exist in an ordinary two-car collision, from hours-of-service limits to cargo-loading standards to the qualification requirements a carrier is supposed to enforce before putting a driver on the road. Because so much of the key evidence, black box data, driver logs, maintenance records, is time-sensitive and can be lost or overwritten within weeks, the early steps taken after a crash often matter as much as anything that happens later in the case. Anyone evaluating representation for this kind of claim should look closely at whether a firm has actually litigated commercial trucking cases specifically, rather than only handling routine car accidents, since the discovery process and the parties involved are genuinely different.
Case results and figures mentioned above are as published on each firm’s own website and do not guarantee a similar outcome in any other case.
