The Yerrid Law Firm

C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.

A Hernando County jury returned a $330 million verdict for Angela Stone after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and fatally struck a minivan carrying her 13-year-old daughter.

A Hillsborough County jury awarded $216.8 million to Allan Navarro after an emergency room misdiagnosed his stroke as sinusitis, leaving him permanently paralyzed. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Florida history at the time.

A Hillsborough County jury awarded $76.8 million in compensatory damages to the family of Dana Maria Rivera, a 36-year-old mother of four killed on February 28, 2025, when Nicholas Betancourt, released from a DUI arrest that same morning, crossed the center line on Gunn Highway in Odessa while impaired by cocaine and methamphetamine.

A Hillsborough County jury awarded $30 million to the parents of Hannah Waite, 23, who died of septic shock after doctors at Kindred Hospital left a known small-intestine ulcer untreated for two months.

C. Steven Yerrid, retained as Tampa's special counsel, secured a $27.4 million settlement from BP for economic damages the city sustained after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest BP payout to any single U.S. municipality.

A Hillsborough County jury returned a $64.5 million verdict for Robert Matthews, a young construction worker left permanently disabled after an 11,000-pound prefabricated building shifted and collapsed on him at a Mosaic fertilizer company mine site.

A Hillsborough County jury in April 2017 awarded the widow of Johnny Lima $3 million in compensatory damages and $12 million in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in an Engle-progeny smoking case, and cleared Philip Morris. Jurors put 40 percent of the fault on Lima, so the compensatory award fell to $1.8 million and the punitive award stood, for $13.8 million. Florida's Second District Court of Appeal affirmed in January 2019.

Cal football lineman Ted Agu, 21, died on Feb. 7, 2014 after a team conditioning workout, despite carrying sickle cell trait known to the program. His parents sued, and the University of California admitted liability. In April 2016 it settled for $4.75 million and agreed to athletics safety reforms and a permanent memorial in the team locker room.

Hillsborough County schools paid a then-record $2 million after a 16-year-old Wharton High linebacker struck his head on a field-lining machine left on the practice area, suffering a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury that put him in a coma for nine days.