TAMPA - The hallways of Tampa personal injury lawyer C. Steven Yerrid's office are covered with framed jury awards, million-dollar checks, cover pages of legal filings and newspaper clippings.
      It's what Yerrid calls the "hall of shame."
      A sampling of the cases include the $7.5 million jury against a manufacturer of a popular exercise seat for children that Yerrid said led to the product's removal from the market.
      There is the college student who won $1 million from a local bank after he was attacked at an automatic teller machine and lost an eye. Yerrid said that award led to improved safety measures around the machines.
      And there is the $4 million award to two children whose father was killed by a train when his vehicle was trapped in a pothole at a railroad crossing. Yerrid said the jury made the award even though the father was divorced and did not have the custody of the children.
      The shame on Yerrid's walls has brought him recognition from one of the most exclusive groups of lawyers, the Inner Circle of Advocates.
      The Inner Circle is an organization of the top 100 plaintiff trial lawyers who gather once a year to share information and improve their ability to represent clients. Membership is by invitation only and candidates must exclusively represent people who have been harmed or damaged. Insurance company defense attorneys are not permitted to be members.
      Also, candidates must have tried at least 50 cases and have obtained at least one jury verdict of $1 million or more. Yerrid says he has tried about 100 cases and had about 20 jury awards over $1 million each.
      Yerrid, 45, joins other notable lawyers in the organization such as Bill Colson, a Miami lawyer who tried the first successful case against Ford Motor Co.'s exploding Pinto gasoline tanks and Texas lawyer Joseph Jamail, known as "The King of Torts," after winning an $11 million verdict for Pennzoil over Texaco in 1986.
      Florida lawyers in the Inner Circle include Theodore Babbitt and Robert M. Montgomery, Jr. of West Palm Beach; R.J. Beckman of Jacksonville; Aaron S. Podhurst: J.B. Spence: Larry S. Stewart and William M. Hicks, all of Miami; Fredric G. Levin of Pensacola; James Nance of Melbourne; and Sheldon Schlesinger of Fort Lauderdale.

06/07/95