Two lawyers with over 20,000 collective days in representing those injured in maritime accidents. That kind of experience is rare. That kind of knowledge is rarely surpassed. That kind of experience wins cases.
Admiralty, Maritime and Boating Accident Attorneys and Circuit Civil Mediators
The law firm of Clark & Zedella, P.A. has a long and proven track record of prevailing in aggressively litigated maritime personal injury cases. We are a small firm with big success. Our attorneys regularly compete with and litigate against the largest law firms and corporations. Our legal training, methods, and quality of practice exceed that found in most large firms. We are known and respected by our peers in the maritime field.
Historically, Clark & Zedella, P.A. has specialized in admiralty and maritime matters. We are, however, trial lawyers who litigate all types of civil cases. If we choose not to accept your case, we have an extensive referral network of competent attorneys anywhere in the United States. If you have a legal question about any kind of case, do not hesitate to call us and we will refer you to the right kind of lawyer if the case is outside our area of expertise.
Some large general practice law firms advertise for maritime and boating accident cases. They may not be experts in this field. We specialize and practice in this field every day. If you have been injured on or around the water, call us and you will speak directly with qualified maritime, admiralty and boating lawyers. You will not have to navigate through layers of staff to reach our attorneys.
Clark & Zedella, P.A. has its home office in Jacksonville, Florida. Its attorneys have over sixty years of collective experience in litigating large and very complex cases. Clark & Zedella, P.A has represented individual plaintiffs involving personal injury and property damage since its inception.
Clark & Zedella, P.A is located near downtown, the Federal and State courthouses, the St. Johns River and the Port of Jacksonville and its lawyers have represented clients involved in maritime accidents and injuries since 1987.
While our focus has been on admiralty and maritime matters, we also handle cases involving personal injury, wrongful death, automobile, trucking, heavy equipment, medical malpractice, commercial and business disputes. We have been Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Mediators since 2009.
Our firm incorporates the latest technology while providing exceptional personal service to our clients. We recognize that technology allows for more responsive and comprehensive representation. We also know that our clients are people not files or numbers and we take pride in providing prompt personal communication and being accessible to our clients. Our firm has the same access to the same legal libraries and resources available to the largest law firms and allows us to compete headlong against the opposition.
Call us and let our years of maritime experience work for you. We are the best firm to bring you a successful result in your maritime injury case.
Dwayne Clark and Kristen Zedella are Certified Circuit Mediators. We are willing and able to assist you in mediating your maritime or general civil cases. We can mediate your case individually or as a team. We have reasonable mediation rates and years of experience in settling disputed litigation matters.
Our firm has recovered tens of millions of dollars for those injured on or around the water. Both in settlements and trial verdicts we have put full and fair compensation into the pockets and bank accounts of our clients. At the end of the day and the conclusion of a case our goal is to get a full recovery of damages for our clients which may include pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, medical costs, lost wages in the past and future and lost benefits. Don’t settle quick and cheap on your own or with unqualified law firms.
Call us for an analysis of the full compensation you may be entitled to under the law.
After serving in the United States Coast Guard, Dwayne Clark was employed with one of Houston’s most prominent maritime law firms where he worked as a Marine Investigator. He spent extensive time on Coast Guard and civilian merchant vessels during this time. This experience inspired him to become a maritime lawyer. Mr. Clark received his law degree at the University of Oklahoma. His maritime background combined with years of legal practice has made him one of the most experienced and prominent maritime lawyers in Jacksonville and Florida.
Kristen Zedella received her Juris Doctorate at Florida State University. During law school, she began working as a law clerk for a personal injury firm where she assisted the partners litigating serious personal injury and death cases against large corporations and insurance companies. Ms. Zedella returned to her hometown where, along with her partner, Dwayne Clark, she started a maritime practice of her own. From the inception of her practice Ms. Zedella has specialized in maritime cases and for decades has represented mariners in serious injury cases. She, like her partner, is one of the most experienced and prominent maritime attorneys in Jacksonville and across the State.
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to