Nine years ago this coming week, the Chattanooga Bar Association lost one of its most skilled, beloved and colorful members, Harry L. Weill.
Many of you reading will likely have had the pleasure of knowing Harry and can still recall with marked detail his gentlemanly manner, his keen wit and his unflinching optimism. Regrettably, a sizeable and ever-growing lot of younger readers will not have had that opportunity. One thing is certain: those who did know Harry are far richer for it.
Whether in the courtroom, on a ski slope or from the open window of his 11th floor office, Harry lived his life with an endearing and ever-present zeal that made him a unique and formidable adversary. Harry was imminently likeable and unfailingly mischievous. In his sixty years of practice, Harry never lost either attribute. Among his other antics, he is known to have sailed Number 10 envelopes from his 11th floor offices of the Volunteer Building to his waiting secretary on the street below in order to catch the 7 p.m. mail run. He was also rumored to have dropped a few water balloons from that same window.
Very rarely did one leave a settlement discussion with Harry without experiencing more than ample quantities of frustration, amusement and respect. The particular mix of those ingredients would sometimes depend entirely on just how mischievous or zealous Harry was feeling on that particular day. Still, at all times, Harry was the consummate gentleman and was blessed with such a regal, gracious and gregarious personality that disagreements over the value or merits of a case never turned to harsh words or ill feelings.
Harry simply believed that his clients deserved the best that he could give them. As a consequence of that firmly-held belief, he worked tirelessly every day (including the weekends) to deliver that to them. While the law and its limited ability to redress wrongs might sometimes fail them, Harry never did.
Harry’s belief that he could deliver for his clients was well-grounded in his many successes. To that end, Harry never met a challenge or adventure that he did not face head-on. Born on Sept. 12, 1916, in Chattanooga, he entered The McCallie School at the tender age of nine. He was so small that he could not carry the standard issue military rifle required and had to carry a smaller toy wooden rifle instead. Still, he persevered, excelled, and entered the University of Virginia at the ripe old age of fifteen. In addition to his studies in Charlottesville, Harry mastered the art of daredevilry on his Harley Davidson motorcycle. In 1940, Harry graduated from Harvard Law School and joined the Chattanooga firm of Frazier & Roberts.
However, true to form, when World War II interrupted the start of his law practice, Harry did not shirk the challenge. Instead, he received flight training and became an Army Air Corp B29 pilot, flying bombing missions from Guam. When the war ended in 1945, Harry returned to practice law at his old firm and began in earnest a career that would engage his remarkable talents over the next sixty years until his death on June 22, 2005.
As a young lawyer, it did not take Harry long to make his mark. In 1946, he and four other Chattanooga Bar Association committee members made national headlines when they publicly uncovered an illicit “divorce mill” operating out of the Chattanooga court system. Likely arising as an unfortunate consequence of the numerous hasty weddings surrounding World War II, a local judge had started granting equally hasty divorces (and was apparently doing so in droves). The committee’s investigation and subsequent report revealed that (a) the Chattanooga divorce rate was suspiciously nine times the national average; (b) local divorces were being granted at a rate of 200 per month; (c) twelve divorces had been granted in a seventeen minute period on a Saturday; and (d) one particular divorcee had been divorced sixteen times by the same judge. Due to the work of this committee, the Chattanooga Bar Association won the American Bar Association’s Award of Merit in 1947. It was the first Tennessee bar association to be so honored.
Although his civic contributions were immense, the courtroom, however, is where Harry did his very best work. He was a consummate trial lawyer and loved to try cases of all sizes and complexities. While equally gracious in both victory and defeat, he won often and obtained significant verdicts for his clients. In one particular case in the early 1980s, he obtained a million-dollar punitive damage judgment for the heirs of a motorist who struck a tractor-trailer while it was attempting to make an illegal U-turn on an interstate highway. At trial, he was able to show that the truck driver had using amphetamines at the time of the accident and had gone without sleep for almost forty straight hours. At the time, this was the largest punitive damage verdict in Tennessee legal history. The verdict is still discussed as a watershed moment by legal scholars today due to its subsequent impact on industrial safety standards for drivers.
Regardless of the nature of the case, Harry was a well-prepared and fearless adversary. He would often tell his younger colleagues, “Don’t be timid,” and he certainly followed his own advice, always preferring to try a case to its conclusion in front of a jury rather than settle. His unwillingness to back down from a fight, his unbridled love of the courtroom, and his unflinching belief that he could turn the goodwill of the trier of fact to the side of his client were certainly sources of frustration to those who came up against him. A personal favorite story is the one laughingly relayed to me by Buz Dooley many years ago. Harry and Buz had a case on the eve of trial. Buz was tasked with the unenviable challenge of obtaining a “reasonable” demand from Harry. After several sincere requests for anything resembling a reasonable demand, Harry responded only with a giggle and these telling words, “Buz, I just don’t have it in me.”
Another favorite story involves Harry and his great friend and legal contemporary, Paul Campbell, Jr. With both returning to Chattanooga to practice law immediately after World War II and both continuing to practice here for over sixty years, Paul, Jr. and Harry had locked horns hundreds of times. Only a very few years before Harry’s death, they managed to settle their very first case together. Characteristic of their good-natured combativeness, each then began to chide the other as to exactly which one of the two had grown soft in their old age.
Harry successfully tried cases right up until his death at the age of 88. In fact, he won his last jury trial on April 29, 2005 – only two months before his death. Earlier that same year in February, he had taken his annual ski trip to the Swiss Alps, and with his characteristic lack of timidity, ventured forth in bad weather and had to be dug out of the snow drifts twice. He remained gallant, with the same twinkle in his eye and the same confident stride, all the way to the end of his career.
Harry was a champion of the Chattanooga Bar Association and the lawyers that comprised it. For eighteen years, he served as the chair of its Memorial Committee. For these many years, he personally oversaw the drafting and presentation of memorial resolutions for 120 lawyers who passed away. In 2006, the Chattanooga Bar Association resolved to commemorate perpetually Harry’s contributions and attributes by establishing the Harry Weill Zealous Practice of Law Award to honor those lawyers who zealously and effectively represent their clients, while still maintaining an air of dignity, humor and grace. This award has become one of the most prestigious and coveted awards annually given by the Chattanooga Bar Association.
Harry’s legacy also lives on in the form of the law firm that he led for many years, Weill & Long PLLC, where Harry’s daughter, Flossie Weill, and nephew, Ira Long, and their staff, still practice law with grace and zeal, just like their beloved teacher.
If you are interested in hearing more about Harry’s life and exploits, Flossie’s husband, Barry Parker, is in the process of publishing a book about Harry and his family tree. Barry is an extremely accomplished and talented writer who captures the very essence of Harry in his book. Barry was kind enough to share an advance excerpt that I reviewed as part of my research for this article. Simply stated, it is a fascinating look at a fascinating man and deserves to be read. As Barry so aptly concludes, Harry’s life was truly one “fully lived” and it deserves to be remembered with laughter and admiration.