Like a modern-day Robin Hood with a Twist, C. Steven Yerrid is using what he calls dirty money to help children.

       The Charleston Native headed up Florida's "Dream Team" of 11 lawyers who took a giant chance and challenged the tobacco industry for their role in contributing to the disease and deaths of smokers. No one thought they'd win.

      But they did. After the landmark victory, an arbitration panel in December 1998 awarded the lawyers what the State of Florida originally agreed upon in the contract, or 25 percent of the settlement.

      It amounted to $3.4 billion.

      Now Yerrid is scattering his earnings among those who need it most, including West Virginia's Ronald McDonald Houses. Yerrid on Friday presented three checks for $10,000 each to the administrators of the Charleston, Huntington and Morgantown programs. The programs provide a home away from home for families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at nearby hospitals.

      Yerrid and his wife, Sharon, who sits on the board of the Florida Ronald McDonald Houses, are active donors to a number of child-oriented causes.

      "Our war was waged on behalf of children," Yerrid said after the Charleston ceremony. "Florida was a leader in the tobacco war."

      The son of Charlie Yerrid and Faye Griffith, Yerrid, 51, grew up on Watts Hill and in Kanawha City, attending Chamberlain Elementary and Horace Mann Junior High schools.

      After his parents divorced, he and his mother moved to Tampa when he was 13. He later graduated from Louisiana State University and Georgetown University School of Law.

      Though he began his career as a defense counsel, he has won more than 20 verdicts of $1 million or more, including a construction accident lawsuit with a $16 million verdict. He also has earned settlements of $1 million or more in about 50 cases.

      His successful plaintiff work catapulted him into the exclusive Inner Circle that numbers only 100 members nationally, including Charleston lawyer Scott Segal.

      But Yerrid said he firmly believed that he could help Floridians recoup the billions of dollars the state had spent on health case for residents who smoked.

      Both his parents died from tobacco-related illnesses.

      "The task to be undertaken was truly daunting," Yerrid told a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1997, when some had challenged the lawyers' right to their contingency fees.

      The law firms, he argued, spent $10 million of their own money during the 2 ½ year case without any monetary support from the state.

      They "shouldered enormous risk in taking on what was then viewed as, quite frankly, an almost insurmountable legal war," Yerrid told Congress.

      "The tobacco companies themselves retained formidable legal talent and engaged in some of the most intense hardball litigation I have ever witnessed."

      Yerrid filed papers to mortgage his own home to pay legal fees.

      The day his bank turned him down on a technical detail, he received word of the settlement.

      "Everyone thought we would lose," he said Friday. "Everyone was bailing out."

      It could take between 15 and 50 years for the tobacco industry to pay up, according to the Tampa Tribune. Under arbitration, it was able to cap the amount it pays for attorneys' fees a $500 million a year. After the multi-state settlement was signed by the states, including West Virginia, the payback was further diluted, Yerrid said.

      But Yerrid has been contributing to children's philanthropies for two decades. He also is helping organize Olympic boxing trials being held in Tampa today as part of Tampa's drive to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to that city.

      "Nicotine has ravaged every sector of our society," Yerrid said Friday. "We have a wonderful opportunity not to squander this money, to better the health care system. We need media campaigns, the core of prevention, to the schools, on the airwaves."

05/10/80