Vanderbilt University Law School, the Nashville community, and the legal profession lost a great colleague and friend on Friday with the death of Professor Richard Nagareda.

I never had the privilege of taking any of Professor Nagareda’s classes, but I do vividly remember a short talk he gave during my first-year civil procedure on class action litigation.  In fifteen minutes, Professor Nagareda flew through an engaging overview of the American mass-tort litigation landscape, which concluded with an invitation to take his course on the subject.  It was well understood to be one of the most difficult and demanding courses the school offered, culminating with a grueling eight-hour final; the course had a wait list every year that I was at Vanderbilt.

I’ll personally remember Professor Nagareda as the outgoing and energetic professor that graciously MCed the school’s Public Interest Stipend Fund every year, and knew my name beginning from my first semester at Vanderbilt (even though he had no reason to know me from Adam).  He wasn’t just one of the most brilliant and accomplished professors in the Legal Academy; he was one of the most commendably and wonderfully human.

Our hearts and prayers are with Professor Nagareda’s family.

“That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.”

-A, L.T.