Chip Wagar

Chip applies his more than four decades of civil trial litigation experience to the most complex and difficult cases of medical malpractice and products liability nowadays. Based in the metro New Orleans area, Chip is licensed in Louisiana and Texas. He has engaged in a multi-state practice and has been admitted pro hac vice in many other states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Chip brings together meticulous preparation with passionate courtroom advocacy on behalf of both his individual and corporate clients.

Chip’s preeminent professional achievements have been recognized by his peers and various legal and professional organizations, including Super Lawyers, the American Board of Trial Advocates, and the International Association of Defense Counsel. He is a Life Member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and has received Martindale’s highest (AV) rating for lawyers for more than 30 years. In January 2015, he was lead counsel in a medical malpractice wrongful death case in New Orleans that resulted in an $8 million dollar jury award—the highest damage award to a single medical malpractice victim in Louisiana history at the time it was rendered. In March 2024, Chip was lead counsel in another medical malpractice case that resulted in a $12,624,975 jury award. He has negotiated many multi-million-dollar settlements for his clients over the years in medical malpractice. Chip handles medical malpractice cases and other civil litigation cases all over Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, and Texas.

Chip also represents local, national, and international manufacturers in products liability litigation claims involving the defense of personal injury, property damage, and business interruption claims. Chip has been a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel, an invitation-only organization of preeminent defense attorneys, and regularly represents Fortune 500 clients in these cases.

Chip has taught trial advocacy to hundreds of lawyers over the years with the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and to law students at Tulane and LSU law schools in Louisiana. He is presently an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University’s College of Law, where he teaches Medical Malpractice law. He is also an award-winning writer of historical fiction, having two published novels, An American in Vienna and The Carpathian Assignment, and a newly released non-fiction work, Double Emperor: The Life and Times of Francis of Austria.

Chip Wagar and his wife Cheryl have lived in Mandeville, Louisiana since the late 1980s—a city near New Orleans on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Chip has two children, Will Wagar and Sarah Hickman. He enjoys writing in his free time, as well as travel and exploration, especially in Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas. An avid history buff, he narrates the military history podcast Killing Time on iTunes, which explores the greatest battles and campaigns that changed the course of history.