Making the best out of a bad situation.
That, in a way, sums up the roughly 40-year career of highly acclaimed Hawaii lawyer Jim Wagner, who died Sept. 2 after a long fight against a form of blood cancer called multiple myeloma.
Wagner, 71, was a business bankruptcy attorney — so for the most part he wasn’t a high-profile kind of guy working on cases that attract popular interest like courtroom trials involving heinous crimes or scandalous corruption.
Yet Wagner made big impacts on thousands of local residents in unfortunate situations where the companies they worked for or invested in were being shut down, sold or given lifesaving cash infusions. And the bankruptcy cases he worked on were typically the biggest or most complicated — Aloha Airlines, Liberty House, Hawaiian Airlines, Hilo Hattie, Hamakua Sugar Co. and Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham & Wong.
“It’s hard to think of a big case that he didn’t work on,” said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Faris.
Wagner also had a large influence on Hawaii’s business bankruptcy law profession, fostering education and mentoring numerous former associates, including Faris.
“His passing is a loss to the local business bankruptcy bar,” said Don Gelber, a veteran local bankruptcy attorney who had his own firm until partnering to form Gelber & Wagner not long after Wagner moved to Hawaii in 1974 with a fresh law degree from the University of Akron School of Law in Ohio. “I will miss him.”
Wagner was born in Akron and joined the Navy in 1966. Part of his military career was spent at a secure facility under pineapple fields in Kunia, during which time he also earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. After completing his Navy service on the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard during the Vietnam War, Wagner studied law back in Ohio and then returned to Hawaii for work.
As a bankruptcy attorney, Wagner saw the insides of operations from mom-and-pop businesses to big corporations. Some could be untangled and still live on. Others had to be liquidated.
Besides his first firm, Wagner’s name was attached to several others where new hires became partners and often ascended to other prominent positions in Hawaii.
Among firms with Wagner’s name were Wagner & Watson, Wagner Watson & Pettit, Wagner Choi & Evers and the latest, Wagner Choi & Verbrugge.
“He served as a great role model for me and many others,” said James Evers, a former partner who is now an attorney representing the state Office of Consumer Protection. “Jim was a very special man, a very caring man and a very generous man.”
Problem solver
Evers recalled Wagner as a particularly creative attorney who was able to see resolution where others couldn’t. In the case of Hamakua Sugar, the company had a whole crop of sugar cane ready to harvest but trustees charged with liquidating any assets of value to benefit creditors saw the crop as a liability for the money-losing company.
But Wagner, in his role representing a newly appointed trustee, helped find a way to harvest the crop at a profit, which kept employees working longer and benefited creditors, Evers recalled.
“They actually made money, and that was an operation that had historically lost money,” he said. “They ended up making quite a bit of money on that final harvest in large part to Jim’s creative thinking.”
Ted Pettit, who went to work for Wagner in 1986 and is now a partner at Case Lombardi & Pettit, also recalled that his former boss helped convey plantation homes to workers.
“Anything Jim did, he kept in mind what’s best for the community,” Pettit said.
Pettit said part of what made Wagner special was his ability to understand the workings of businesses that others ran and then seeking creative solutions to complicated problems. Pettit added that Wagner helped educate other attorneys and was extremely courteous to lawyers representing other interests.
“Jim brought to the bankruptcy bar another level of sophistication,” Pettit said. “By following his style of practice, others elevated their practice.”
Faris, the bankruptcy judge, who worked at Gelber & Wagner right out of law school at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983, called Wagner a mentor and has been impressed by his ability to resolve issues.
“He’s one of the lawyers who was always looking for solutions rather than problems … and would reach a solution for both sides if possible,” Faris said. “He was talented at getting people who were at each other’s throats to resolve their differences.”
Rewald saga
In one notable case in the 1980s, Wagner represented a court-appointed trustee managing the assets of fake investment firm Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham & Wong, which was uncovered to be a Ponzi scheme hatched by local businessman Ronald Rewald, who later went to prison.
Gelber recalled that Wagner and others on the case had to get security clearances to review classified material because of Rewald’s alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency. “A bizarre feature for a business bankruptcy case,” Gelber said.
In the Aloha Airlines bankruptcy, Wagner explained one of the more usual assets the defunct company planned to sell: a lawsuit Aloha filed against the parent company of competitor go! airlines.
“A lawsuit is no different than a propeller,” he was quoted in a 2008 Honolulu Star-Bulletin story. “It’s an asset and we’re going to sell it.”
The lawsuit was sold for $10 million.
Chuck Choi, one of Wagner’s partners, said Wagner was “the man,” and was in court up until about two months ago.
Family members said Wagner was the only private attorney from Hawaii honored as a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. Wagner also has been named to the peer-generated “America’s Best Lawyers” list every year since 1987.
Outside work, Wagner was a founding director and vice president of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Hawaii. His family said he enjoyed golf, traveling, theater, opera, the symphony and coaching soccer and baseball games of his children and others.
Daughter Jennifer Lee Czerwinski said her dad was dedicated to his family. “He was an anchor,” she said. “He wanted the best for anyone he encountered.”
Besides Czerwinski, Wagner is survived by his wife, Pattie, sons Matthew Wagner and James “Koa” Wagner, and seven grandchildren.
Visitation will be Thursday at Sacred Heart Church, 1701 Wilder Ave., at 4 p.m. followed by Mass at 5 p.m. Aloha attire.
Inurnment at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific will be Sept. 23 at 11:30 a.m.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Hawaii or the International Myeloma Foundation.
