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About
A. Wilson Wages
Read
"Why
I Became a Lawyer"
Practice Areas
- Personal Injury
- Workers Compensation
- Wrongful Death
- Medical Malpractice
- Product Liability
- Wills and Probate
- Civil Litigation
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"My
family and my most prized non-breathing possession, a '67
Cadillac that was owned by my dad when he died in 1969."
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Professional
Memberships
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Certified Civil Trial
Specialist
Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education
and Specialization
National Institute for Trial
Advocacy
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American Association for
Justice (formerly Association of Trial Lawyers of
America)
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Tennessee Association for
Justice (formerly Tennessee Trial Lawyers
Association): Board of Governors
Education
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Memphis State University Law
School (J.D., 1978)
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University of Tennessee at
Knoxville (B.S., With Honors, 1975)
- Jackson State Community College
Personal
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First Baptist Church,
Millington, Tennessee (Teacher of 3rd Grade Sunday School,
1993-2000)
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As a youth basketball coach for
seven years, coached the First Baptist Church team to the
10-and-under league championship in the City of Memphis basketball
tournament
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Soccer coach for 12 years in
the Millington youth leagues
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Born in Shelby County,
Tennessee, December 6, 1953
Why
I Became a Lawyer
Back
My father was a smart man. He only
went to the second grade but he knew more than a lot of folks —
doctors, lawyers, professors, etc. He was a sharecropper from
Mississippi who later became a successful business man in the furniture
business. He always said, though, that in his lifetime the small retail
business person would be put out of business by the large chain. He was
right.
At an early age, it seemed like
all I ever saw was the "little guy" getting squeezed out by
the big guy, whether it was the small retail business person or the
blue-collar worker or the widows and children. I saw how my mother was
treated by the legal system when, following my father's death in a
tragic and unexpected plane crash, she was handed the
responsibility of raising a 14-year-old. She was a teacher with no
job, no business experience and had never driven a car. Other than by
her attorney, Mr. C.A. Davis, she was handled in a rude, condescending
manner by all of the folks she came in contact with in the legal system.
The lawsuit that she and others
filed against those that they felt responsible for the deaths of my
father and others was lost — thrown out by the judge — in favor of
the government.
I am a trial lawyer, and I am very
proud to be. There has always been a Goliath in this
country, but as long as the people had the right to legal representation
and a jury to decide their fate (something which the brilliant leaders
who drafted our Constitution knew many years ago), then we all have a
chance. Those chances are dwindling, and time is running out.
Don't be misled by "tort
reform," "runaway juries," "greedy lawyers" and
the like. These are nothing more than a smokescreen to put pressure on
legislatures to take away the rights of the individual at the hands of
the almighty corporation. Because there is only one thing that scares
the almighty corporation: that is you, a jury. When the corporations are
allowed to use their power and influence to set money damages at
$250,000, which is what they want and are pushing for now, they will
have managed to strip away the time-honored fundamental right of U.S.
citizens.
Maybe if I hadn't been born in the
circumstances I was born in, I would feel a little differently. Perhaps,
if my father was the President of the United States, and his father was
a wealthy New England banker and Congressman; perhaps if I had gone to
Yale and Harvard instead of Jackson State Community College, Memphis
State and UT, I would be more "enlightened" and see the world
through different eyes. I am sort of glad to see the world through the
eyes I am looking through now.
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