James Vickaryous

James Vickaryous is the oldest of four sons of a Navy nurse and a Navy pilot who met on Coronado Island. His mother wanted four doctors, but she saw early that he was terrified of needles and could not stand blood, so she steered him toward law; two of his brothers became doctors. His father’s advice stuck harder: “Do something that’s going to help people.” Vickaryous says the work is fun and “makes you sleep well at night.”

Vickaryous says he and his firm have an unusually high risk tolerance. He takes difficult cases that others turn away, to the point that paralegals ask, “Jim, what are we doing here?” His answer is that he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. He is diplomatic with insurers and opposing counsel but will not be talked out of what he sees: “We’ll see it our way, and we’ll let the jury tell us how they see it.”

About 10 years ago Vickaryous represented a family struck by a billionaire who was watching TV on a dashboard screen in his customized Chevy Silverado and ran a stop sign. The father, a good Samaritan, stopped at the wreck before realizing it was his own minivan; his wife and young son died, and he donated their organs. Florida prosecuted the driver for vehicular manslaughter, but the surviving 13-year-old daughter wrote a note forgiving him so his children would not be orphaned. Vickaryous remains close friends with the father.

Vickaryous recalls 1997, when a three-star general told his Army Reserve military police unit at Fort Bliss it would deploy to Bosnia in 30 days. As a platoon leader with about 40 troops, he patrolled the Zone of Separation under the Dayton Peace Accords and saw thriving valleys next to valleys razed to their foundations because ethnic groups had lost faith in their courts. “Nothing is perfect, certainly not American justice. But after seeing the world, I like our system a lot more than any other,” he says.

Vickaryous earned a B.A. from the University of Florida in 1989 and a J.D. from Stetson University College of Law in 1993, and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1994. In a tight job market, a law school roommate called one morning and told him to show up at noon because the senior partner needed a lawyer that afternoon; that landed him at a Sarasota-Bradenton commercial litigation firm. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Vickaryous founded The Vickaryous Law Firm (yourfloridainjurylawyer.com) in Seminole County, Florida, in 2004, and it is based in Lake Mary. The firm focuses exclusively on personal injury, including motor vehicle accidents, truck wrecks and premises liability. He first took injury cases at a general practice he co-founded in Pasco County in the mid-1990s, where clients who could not pay their bills after being hit by a truck often did not realize they could make a claim. He is a member of the Seminole County Bar Association.