Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 6, 2009
Goggans elected to state trucking association’s board of directors
Samara Litvack
Many attorneys have unique reasons for going into the legal profession, and Nathaniel Goggans is no exception. His story starts early in life when, as a child, he was home schooled.
“At that time there was no law one way or the other about home schooling,” he says. “It was neither legal nor illegal. It was just unheard of.”
Goggans’ parents felt the need to address this issue, so they, along with other local home schooling parents and an attorney, set up the Tennessee Home Education Committee, which lobbied at the state capital for a home school bill. Eventually, their efforts, combined with the efforts of others across Tennessee, resulted in the first home school bill being passed in the state.
“As I continued spending time around the legislature and watching the law being made, I got to realizing how important this is,” says Goggans. “That one thing led to another and when I was in high school I started thinking maybe being an attorney would be a good career choice, something I would enjoy.”
He joined a mock trial team and began interning for a local attorney. This experience gave him a feel for both the courtroom and the behind the scenes work attorneys deal with on a daily basis. The more he looked into each avenue of law, the more he seemed to believe he’d found his calling.
Goggans earned his undergrad in history, with minors in business and Bible, from Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn. From there, he went on to the University of Tennessee College of Law.
“That was an adventurous time,” Goggans says. “I met my wife, Julie, at Bryan College. We got married two weeks before I started law school.”
She was student teaching in Rhea County and he was attending law school in Knoxville, so the pair lived halfway in between and drove an hour in opposite directions every day. Such a living situation would be tough for most relationships, but theirs was strong enough to withstand the pressure. And, as if that weren’t an interesting enough twist to his story, Goggans’ life didn’t get any less interesting after law school.
Julie was pregnant with the couple’s first child as he prepared to take the bar exam. The day of the test, she was near the end of her third trimester and he, of course, could not keep his cell phone on during the exam.
“I’d have to go out every break and turn on my cell phone,” he says. “I’d call my wife and find out, ‘OK, how many contractions have you had?’ And then go back in and take the next portion of the exam.”
Their son was born the day after (and Goggans passed the bar, to boot). Today, the couple has three children – a 6-year-old son, a 4-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old baby boy – and the family has just started home schooling.
“That keeps us pretty busy,” says Goggans.
And when he’s not at home with his family, or enjoying the outdoors or attending Signal Mountain Bible Church, he’s practicing law at Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel.
“I absolutely love working here,” he says. “It’s a great group of people and some of the most highly respected members of the bar.”
Early in his career, Goggans worked for a different local firm on a wide variety of cases, but he was always interested in medial malpractice defense and products liability. When a position opened at Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, he applied. After landing the job, he branched out into business litigation, with a specific emphasis on trucking litigation. Since then, he has developed quite a specialty in the field.
“What got me into it was representing trucking companies (and) truck drivers who are involved in over-the-road collisions,” he says. “They would sue for personal injury, property damage, those sorts of things.”
While this is his primary focus, he also represents clients in cargo disputes, where there are disagreements regarding shipping fees, where cargo was lost or damaged and more.
“There are federal regulations and statutes that govern the trucking field,” he says. “It’s a highly regulated market. The regulations and the interests of the trucking community make it a prime field to really focus on and learn what’s important and what affects the day-to-day operations of a trucking company so I can represent them better.”
Goggans was recently elected to serve on the board of directors for the Tennessee Trucking Association. The organization, he says, is a volunteer association that promotes changes in federal regulations, emphasizes safety and environmental sustainability and supports the needs of the trucking industry.
“One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is truckers have a much lower rate of accidents and so on than your average driver because they’ve been carefully trained and because they do this day in and day out,” Goggans says. “The majority of collisions that involve tractor trailers are found to be the result of the passenger car driver who didn’t understand about blind spots, that kind of thing.”
One of the first things Goggans participated in with the Tennessee Trucking Association was a safety campaign to inform the public about such risks.
“You’ve got to be careful not to get in that blind spot, either directly behind them or just off to the side,” he says. “They wouldn’t even know you’re there if you’re driving in that blind spot.”
Goggans is also a member of the American Bar Association – Litigation Section and Tort Trial and Insurance Section; Chattanooga Bar Association; Chattanooga Medical Group Management Association; Christian Legal Society; Defense Research Institute – Trucking Law, Medical Liability, Commercial Litigation, Diversity and Young Lawyers Committees; Memphis Bar Association; Tennessee Bar Association – Litigation Section and Tort and Insurance Section; Tennessee China Chamber of Commerce, Legal Advisory Committee Chair; Tennessee Defense Lawyers Association; Transportation Lawyers Association; and William Jennings Bryan Opportunity Program, Planning Committee.
He was the assistant coach of the American Mock Trial Invitational national champion team in 2007, led by Coach Jeff Atherton; is a member of the Tennessee Ethics Commission; and has taught CLE courses on ethics and professionalism.
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