When Atlanta attorney Ranse Partin sued the U.S. Civil Air Patrol on behalf of the widow of a physician killed in a 2014 plane crash that also took the lives of two of his companions, he decided to learn to fly.

“There are some things about flying you can only understand by sitting in the left seat, pulling back on the yoke and watching the houses get smaller,” he said.

Partin, a partner at Atlanta's Conley Griggs Partin, put his newly acquired insight to good use, teaming with co-counsel Andy Scherffius, a longtime pilot, and firm associate Will Owens in building a successful negligence case against Civil Air Patrol aviators during a six-day federal bench trial before U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten in federal court in Newnan.