Tampa trial attorney Steve Yerrid quoted in AP story about how BP and others involved in the oil spill will likely face criminal charges.
Yerrid, who served as Special Counsel on oil spill matters under former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, has won upwards of 200 $1 million-plus jury verdicts and settlements over his career, including the nation’s largest jury verdict awards in two of the past several years. Most recently he secured what’s believed to be the biggest arbitration award in Florida’s – and the country’s – history.
Yerrid was a member of the “dream team” of a dozen of Florida’s finest trial lawyers who in the late 90s joined to battle Big Tobacco on behalf of the citizens who had been injured by that deadly product. Over several years of grueling work, he and the team did what would have been beyond the capacity of the state to accomplish. In the end, Big Tobacco was forced to repay taxpayers $11 billion.
As a young trial lawyer, he successfully represented the pilot of the Summit Venture, a phosphate freighter that on May 9, 1980 rammed the Sunshine Skyway bridge, causing its collapse and plunging 35 people to their deaths.