The bobcat, the snow goose and the lake trout are in agreement: Richard Wagner is a skilled hunter and fisherman. The bobcat has been perfectly preserved and his lithe body and intense gaze positioned eye-level from the top of a bookshelf near the door of Wagner’s office to greet clients and colleagues. Mounted on a wall, the starkly white snow goose looks as though it’s trying to take flight, though it wouldn’t get far in the cramped confines. And the lake trout, also mounted, appears to be forever frozen in the moment when Wagner’s hook found its mouth in the waters of Canada.
“The snow goose was an odd bird to find here. They’re plentiful out west and in the tundra,” Wagner says. He would know. In addition to hunting locally in Rhea County, he’s dove hunted in Argentina, shot pheasant in South Dakota, and been salmon fishing in Alaska.
But for all of the days Wagner has spent hunting in his 61 years, his clients and colleague are in agreement about something else: Wagner is a skilled lawyer.
As one of the Wagners in Wagner, Nelson & Weeks, located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga, he has a practice focused on two distinctly different areas: personal injury and business law.
Wagner enjoys both – the personal injury work for the diversity of challenges his clients bring him and the transactional work for the opportunity it gives him to do something constructive.
“Seeing the value different people place on a human life is interesting,” he says of his personal injury work, which has involved cases ranging from slip-and-falls, to product defects, to even death. His relaxed expression tightens slightly as he mentions taking on the case of a 6-year-old whose face had been mauled by a dog.
It brightens again as he talks about his work with 3H Group Hotels bringing Spring Hill Suites on Riverfront Parkway to completion–a job that took three years–and his recent handling of a merger of ten hotels for investors based in New York.
“I like that work because I get to see things built versus the paper stuff I do in civil litigation,” he says.
The son of revered Chattanooga lawyer Joseph C. Wagner, who passed away last July at the age of 97, Wagner says he never wondered while growing up about what he was going to do for a living.
“Between my father, both of my grandfathers, and my uncles, I was destined to become a lawyer. I had always been around it. I was going to take political science at [the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga], then I was going to go to law school, and then I was going to join the firm.”
Throughout his 34 years of practice, Wagner has done more than practice law; he’s also engaged in good community stewardship. From helping Boy Scouts earn merit badges, to serving as an alumnus advisor for Kappa Sigma fraternity at UTC, to raising funds for Community Kitchen, he’s made life better for others.
“I was an Eagle Scout, so when I became a lawyer, the troops on Signal Mountain asked me to help the Scouts earn their citizen merit badges. I tell them what to do and then pass them if they do the work,” Wagner says.
One of the tasks Wagner requires involves writing a Congressman and getting a letter back. “Bob Corker is great about doing that. It makes the boys feel like someone in the government is listening to them,” Wagner says.
Wagner’s volunteer efforts as an alumnus advisor involves “keeping boys out of trouble, keeping them in school, and leading them down the right path.” There’s never a dull moment.
“Whether I’m dealing with the student disciplinary board or the campus police, there’s always something going on,” he says.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Wagner and a friend, Jim Bach, have hosted a fundraiser for Community Kitchen at Merv’s, a restaurant on Mountain Creek Road. Taking place on a Thursday in December, Wagner describes it in his usual low key, matter-of-fact manner, saying people come in, have a laugh or two and drop off a check.
Their low key effort has raised tens of thousands of dollars over the years.
Wagner has also served his profession well. A member of the Chattanooga Bar Association, he worked for over a decade to make the Lawyer Referral Service self-sustaining. (The bar in recent years migrated that service to CLIPS.) He’s also served on the association’s Board of Governors.
As Wagner’s practice grew, he had less time available to devote to bar activities–something he regrets. But that didn’t stop the Chattanooga Bar Foundation from inviting him to become a Fellow in 2013. “That was an honor,” he says.
One of nine children, Wagner grew up in Chattanooga, attended UTC, and earned his attorney’s credentials at the Nashville School of Law. Despite being ushered into his career, only his brother Michael also wound up becoming an attorney. Wagner’s other siblings somehow resisted the lure of the law to become doctors and educators.
The same is true of two of the three children Wagner and his wife of 31 years, Sunny, had. One daughter is married and living in Baltimore, while the other daughter works for Advent in Nashville. Their son, however, is a paralegal at Wagner, Nelson & Weeks.
A long time tennis player, Wagner also swings a racket two or three times a week to keep in shape.
As with many of the Fellows, Wagner is more than a button-down attorney. He's also a dyed in the wool hunter and fisherman, dedicated community volunteer and committed family man. But to his clients and colleagues, he is a skilled lawyer.
That suits him fine.
"My father was practicing law here at the age of 97. He walked out the door half an hour before I did the night he died," Wagner says. "So I can't see retiring any time soon. I enjoy what I do, and I can't imagine doing anything else."