Joe Rice died at work.

The co-founder of Motley Rice was 72 when he died Sept. 3 at the Mount Pleasant law firm he started in 2003 with his longtime partner, the late Ron Motley, the Post and Courier reported. The firm called his death “sudden and unexpected.”

Rice made his name across the negotiating table, not in front of juries. Motley Rice says he served as lead negotiator in some of the largest civil cases of the past 30 years, from tobacco to opioids.

His death leaves what the firm calls one of the country’s largest plaintiffs’ litigation firms without the dealmaker who helped build it.

From Winnsboro to Barnwell

Rice was born March 25, 1954, in Winnsboro. He went to high school in Gastonia, North Carolina, where he worked in textile mills, drove a forklift and bagged groceries, the Post and Courier reported.

He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1976 and from its law school in 1979. He then moved to Barnwell, where he teamed up with Motley for the first time at the firm Blatt & Fales, according to the newspaper.

The two split the work. Motley tried cases. Rice settled them.

“He never participated in settlement discussions, and I never participated in what was going on in the courtroom,” Rice once said of Motley, according to the Post and Courier.

Tobacco and asbestos

In the late 1990s, at the predecessor firm Ness Motley, Rice was one of the lead negotiators facing cigarette makers in the Big Tobacco lawsuits, the Post and Courier reported.

Motley Rice says Rice was lead private counsel for 26 jurisdictions in the resulting Master Settlement Agreement, under which the tobacco industry agreed to reimburse states for smoking-related health costs. The firm puts the settlement at $246 billion and calls it the largest civil settlement in U.S. history.

Rice also held leadership and negotiating roles in the bankruptcies of asbestos makers including Johns Manville, W.R. Grace and Owens Corning, according to the firm, and helped structure the trusts that pay people sickened by asbestos products.

Opioids, 9/11 and forever chemicals

More recently, Rice was co-lead counsel in the national prescription opioid litigation. As chair of its negotiating committee, he worked with state attorneys general to reach more than $51 billion in settlements with companies in the opioid supply chain, the firm says.

In 2002, Rice and Motley’s firm sued the alleged financiers of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on behalf of victims’ families. More than 8,800 survivors and family members eventually joined, the Post and Courier reported. Last year, a judge denied Saudi Arabia’s motion to dismiss the case, and no trial date has been set, according to the newspaper.

Don Migliori, a Motley Rice attorney, said that because of Rice’s leadership, the firm “remains committed to carrying on and finishing this fight,” the newspaper reported.

In August 2023, Rice was named a co-lead counsel in the national litigation over firefighting foam made with PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, which is consolidated in U.S. District Court in Charleston. He represented public water systems and other plaintiffs, according to the firm. Those cases are still playing out in federal court downtown, the Post and Courier reported.

A national firm with a Lowcountry base

Motley Rice lists 10 offices, from New York to Oakland, California. Its headquarters is at 28 Bridgeside Blvd. in Mount Pleasant. The firm says it has more than 100 attorneys and hundreds of support staff.

Marlon Kimpson, a former Democratic state senator who practices at the firm, said Rice took the most pride in his family, his friends and the firm’s employees, whom he considered family, the Post and Courier reported.

“Joe created legal theories to hold wrongdoers accountable that will be written about in the annals of history,” Kimpson said.

Rice’s money also stayed in the region. He started Bulls Bay Golf Club in Awendaw, the Post and Courier reported, and the club hosted fundraisers for the children’s hospital at the Medical University of South Carolina.

“Through his and his family commitments, millions of dollars were raised each year in support of our pediatric services,” MUSC President David Cole said in a statement.

In November 2023, after Rice and his wife, Lisa, announced a $30 million gift, the University of South Carolina renamed its law school the Joseph F. Rice School of Law. Rice had gotten into law school through a summer program rather than the normal admissions window.

“It gave me a chance, and that’s what I want to do for kids, give them a chance,” he said then, according to the Post and Courier.

What comes next

Lawyers, public officials and University of South Carolina leaders filled the Charleston Gaillard Center for his funeral on Sept. 14, the Post and Courier reported. His daughter, Ann E. Rice Ervin, is an attorney at Motley Rice.

“He worked ‘til the day he died doing what he wanted to do,” said Anne Kearse, a partner at the firm, according to the newspaper. “We are mourning a dear friend, but he also prepared us to continue his work and do what was important to him.”

The firm struck the same note on its website: “As hard as it will be, we will continue the work that meant so much to him. That commitment will endure as part of his legacy.”