Joseph F. Rice

Joseph Fred Rice was born on March 25, 1954, in Winnsboro, South Carolina, to Donnie "Don" Dewey Rice Jr. and Betty Mae Dunlap Rice. His father was a textile worker and his grandfather a mill paymaster, and the family's roots in Southern mill towns stayed with him for life. He grew up with a sister, Ann, and a brother, Donnie.

Rice attended high school in Gastonia, North Carolina. As a teenager he worked in textile mills, drove a forklift and bagged groceries at a local supermarket. He loved cowboy comics as a boy, and decades later he kept a few old issues, a Christmas gift from a colleague, displayed on his office mantel.

Rice enrolled at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he joined Alpha Tau Omega and met his future wife, Lisa Summer, an Alpha Delta Pi, at a fraternity party. He earned his bachelor's degree, in business administration, in 1976.

He did not get into the law school during the normal admissions window. Instead he entered through a summer program, which he later called a "back door." "It gave me a chance, and that's what I want to do for kids, give them a chance," he said in 2023. During law school summers he tended bar at the Spanish Galleon in Myrtle Beach, joking that he earned "a degree in beach music." He received his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1979. The school was renamed in his honor in 2023, and the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in May 2026.

Rice began practicing law in 1979 at Blatt and Fales in Barnwell, South Carolina, where he first worked with Ron Motley, including on a case involving nuclear fuel rods. The firm later became Ness Motley. Motley handled the courtroom while Rice handled settlement negotiations, a division of labor that made them one of the most formidable pairings in American plaintiffs' law.

Tobacco: As lead private counsel for 26 jurisdictions, including numerous state attorneys general, Rice helped negotiate a proposed $368 billion national tobacco settlement that failed in Congress, and then helped craft the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, in which the tobacco industry agreed to reimburse states for smoking-related health costs. It remains the largest civil settlement in U.S. history.

Motley Rice: In the early 2000s Rice and Motley left their former partners and founded Motley Rice in Mount Pleasant. The Post and Courier dates the start to 2002; the firm is generally dated to 2003. Motley died in 2013, and Rice led the firm for the rest of his life.

Major resolutions: Rice held leadership and negotiating roles in the asbestos bankruptcies of AWI, Federal Mogul, Johns Manville, Celotex, Garlock, W.R. Grace, Babcock and Wilcox, U.S. Gypsum, Owens Corning and Pittsburgh Corning. He was a co-lead negotiator of the two BP Deepwater Horizon settlements and the $1.028 billion Halliburton settlement, and one of the lead negotiators of the roughly $15 billion Volkswagen diesel emissions class settlement. He handled mediations for 56 families of September 11 victims who opted out of the federal compensation fund, led negotiations for thousands of women in transvaginal mesh litigation, and helped negotiate the Takata airbag bankruptcy resolutions.

Opioids and forever chemicals: In January 2018 Judge Dan Aaron Polster named Rice one of three co-lead counsel in the National Prescription Opiate MDL. As chair of the opioid negotiating committee he helped reach more than $51 billion in settlements with companies in the opioid supply chain. In August 2023 he was added as a co-lead counsel in the AFFF firefighting foam litigation in federal court in Charleston, and he served on a court-appointed resolution committee for Camp Lejeune water contamination claims.

Teaching: He was a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law in 1999 and 2000 and taught negotiation at the University of South Carolina, Duke and Charleston School of Law.

Rice married his college sweetheart, Lisa Summer, in 1979; they were married for 47 years. Their daughter, Ann E. Rice Ervin, became an attorney and his law partner at Motley Rice. She is married to R. Tucker Ervin, and their son, Beckett Rice Ervin, called his grandfather "Joe Joe."

Rice described himself as "a frustrated cowboy." He was a skilled horseman, bought a horse soon after law school, and was a part owner of Confidence Game, a colt that finished 10th in the 149th Kentucky Derby in 2023. He was also a passionate golfer who started Bulls Bay Golf Club in Awendaw, South Carolina, and in 2009 he partnered with Dustin Johnson to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He was a devoted Gamecock fan who rarely missed a home football game or a tailgate, and the country singer Darius Rucker was among his close friends. "I don't live a complicated life," he once said. "Professionally I do, but not personally."

Rice believed in hard work, in loving what you do, and in giving people a chance. His personal motto, quoted by his firm, was "Do something good, do it well and better all lives." He urged fellow lawyers from every school to "repay their good fortune with dollars, time, talent or creativity to bring about more positive change."

Colleagues said his power at the bargaining table came from fairness as much as shrewdness. Corporate Legal Times reported that "Rice has earned most of his respect from playing fair and remaining humble." In a South Carolina Lawyers Weekly video interview, his advice was to listen rather than talk.

Rice's negotiations moved hundreds of billions of dollars from corporations to states, communities and injured people, from tobacco and asbestos to opioids, oil spills and contaminated water. National defense counsel and legal scholars described him as one of the nation's "five most feared and respected plaintiffs' lawyers in corporate America."

His name is on the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law and the university's Rice Athletic Center, which opened in 2012. He and his firm created the Ronald L. Motley Memorial Scholarship Fund and a civil litigation training fund at the law school in memory of his partner. After his death, Judge Polster appointed Motley Rice managing partner Donald Migliori to succeed him as opioid MDL co-lead counsel on September 23, 2026. University of South Carolina president Michael Amiridis called him "one of the greatest Gamecocks of our time."

1998: National Association of Attorneys General President's Award. 2010: MUSC Children's Hospital Johnnie Dodds Award. 2011: University of South Carolina Garnet Award; USC School of Law Alumni Association Platinum Compleat Lawyer Award; South Carolina Junior Golf Association Tom Fazio Service to Golf Award. 2012: South Carolina Lawyers Weekly Leadership in Law Award. 2013: Best Lawyers "Lawyer of the Year," Charleston, mass tort litigation and class actions (plaintiffs). 2015: Law360 Product Liability MVP. 2018: Inaugural South Carolina Lawyers Weekly Hall of Fame; South Carolina Association for Justice Founders' Award. 2019 to 2026: Chambers USA, Product Liability Plaintiffs, Nationwide, Band 1. 2020: The National Trial Lawyers Elite Trial Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award. 2024: American Association for Justice Steven J. Sharp Public Service Award (as a member of the opioid plaintiffs' executive committee); Forbes America's Top 200 Lawyers. 2026: Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of South Carolina.

Rice was profiled by The Post and Courier in 2008, and a New York Times profile quoted former coach Steve Spurrier in 2014 on his role as a leading backer of South Carolina football. He appeared in Motley Rice videos on asbestos bankruptcy and success in law, in South Carolina Lawyers Weekly interviews, and in University of South Carolina videos about the 2023 law school naming and his 2026 honorary degree. After his death, The New York Times published an obituary titled "Joseph Rice, Lowcountry Lawyer Who Took On Big Tobacco, Dies at 72." No feature film or book about him has been documented.

Rice died suddenly on Thursday, September 3, 2026, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, aged 72. A representative of Motley Rice told The New York Times the cause was a cardiac event that he experienced at his desk in his law office. Initial local reports said the cause had not been disclosed.

His firm said it was heartbroken by "the sudden and unexpected passing of our beloved leader." Tributes came from the University of South Carolina, the Gamecocks athletics department, Darius Rucker and lawyers across the country. "A giant tree has fallen, but the world is better off because of his footprint on this society," said Marlon Kimpson.

A funeral service was held on Monday, September 14, 2026, at the Charleston Gaillard Center, followed by a celebration of life in its Grand Ballroom. The family asked for memorial gifts to the USC Joseph F. Rice School of Law or the Rice Family Fund at the Coastal Community Foundation. Burial details have not been made public.