About C. Steven Yerrid
C. Steven Yerrid is the founder of The Yerrid Law Firm, P.A. and has practiced as a trial lawyer for more than 45 years. He has secured over 300 verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more for injured individuals and their families. Among his most notable achievements is a $217 million jury verdict for medical malpractice (the largest in Florida history and the nation's largest verdict in 2006), and a $330 million wrongful death jury verdict in 2009 (the country's largest that year). At age 30, Yerrid earned international recognition when he secured the complete exoneration of Captain John Lerro in the 1980 Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster.
In the 1990s, then-Governor Lawton Chiles appointed him as the youngest member of the 11-lawyer team that brought Florida's landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry, resulting in a $17 billion settlement. In 2010, Governor Charlie Crist appointed him Special Counsel for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and he later obtained a $27.5 million settlement for the City of Tampa from BP. Yerrid is a lifetime member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, a recipient of the Florida Justice Association's Perry Nichols Award (its highest honor), and was inducted into the National Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame in 2016. He has taught as an adjunct professor at Stetson Law School and as a visiting professor at his alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center.
Proven verdicts and settlements
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 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 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.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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