Wayne A. Ritchie II
war@rddjlaw.com
Wayne Ritchie is a board certified civil trial specialist who devotes most of his practice to cases involving wrongful death, commercial disputes, construction and contract actions, defective products, trucking, motorcycle and automobile collisions, business disputes, and medical malpractice actions. Less than two percent (2%) of the lawyers in Tennessee are certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education and Specialization. He has also been recognized as one of the Top 100 trial attorneys in Tennessee.
Mr. Ritchie is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as associate editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.
Mr. Ritchie is a past President of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (“ABOTA”) and currently serves as Vice President of the Southeast Chapters of ABOTA. He is a Master of the Bench in the Hamilton Burnett Chapter of the American Inns of Court and has served as its President.
Mr. Ritchie has previously served on the Executive Committee and as President of the Tennessee Association For Justice. He is a member of the Tennessee and American Bar Associations and the American Association For Justice. He has previously served on the Board of Governors of the Knoxville Bar Association.
Mr. Ritchie has spoken at various seminars, including such topics as “Killer Cross-Examination” (“Cross-Examination of Defense Experts”) and “Winning Ways of Master Trial Lawyers” (“Expert Discovery In Automobile Cases”). Additionally, Mr. Ritchie was a member of plaintiff’s trial team, “Masters In Trial Demonstration,” Columbia, SC, sponsored by ABOTA in Nov. of 2007, and “Masters In Trial Examination - Cross Examination and Impeachment of Lay and Expert Witnesses,” Nashville, TN, sponsored by ABOTA in Oct. of 2009. Mr. Ritchie has been certified as a Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 31 Listed General Civil / Family Mediator.
Mr. Ritchie served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in the 98th, 99th and 100th General Assemblies (1992 - 98), where he served on the Finance, Ways and Means and the Judiciary Committees and was appointed by the Speaker to the House Select Committee on Ethics. For his work in the legislature, Mr. Ritchie received the Tennessee Citizen Action Leadership Award for his work on consumer rights and consumer safety issues and was given the “Bird Dog” award by Common Cause for his work on ethics and campaign finance reform.
Mr. Ritchie is a member of the Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church, where he has served as an Elder and as Chair of the Christian Education Division. Previously, he has served on various community boards, including the Bijou Theatre, the Knoxville Opera Company, the Knoxville Symphony, Nucleus Knoxville, and the Safe Kids Coalition. Mr. Ritchie and his wife Margaret have two children.
