Joseph F. Rice worked the third shift on a forklift in a Gastonia, North Carolina textile mill and bagged groceries at the local A&P before he ever set foot in a courtroom. Rice, the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina attorney who went on to co-found the litigation firm Motley Rice and negotiate some of the largest civil settlements in American history, died suddenly on September 3, 2026, at his law office in Mount Pleasant. He was 72.

Rice was born March 25, 1954, in Winnsboro, South Carolina, to Donnie "Don" Dewey Rice Jr. and Betty Mae Dunlap Rice, and grew up in Gastonia. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of South Carolina in 1976 and a law degree from its law school in 1979. At a USC fraternity party he met Lisa Summer, who belonged to Alpha Delta Pi; the two married and stayed married for 47 years.

He began practicing law in 1979 at Blatt & Fales in Barnwell, South Carolina, teaming with a young attorney named Ron Motley. The partnership grew into Ness Motley, and by the late 1990s Rice and Motley were negotiating on behalf of South Carolina and other states against the tobacco industry, producing a Master Settlement Agreement the University of South Carolina puts at close to $246 billion, one of the largest civil settlements in the nation's history. University of South Carolina

In April 2003, Rice and Motley split from that firm to found Motley Rice LLC in Mount Pleasant, which grew to more than 100 attorneys across nine offices. Rice went on to serve as co-lead negotiator on the $15 billion Volkswagen diesel emissions settlement and on settlements from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the largest civil class actions in U.S. history; chaired the plaintiffs' negotiating committee that produced more than $51 billion in national opioid settlements; and sat on the resolution committee overseeing water contamination claims from Camp Lejeune, according to his Motley Rice attorney profile. His firm also represented nearly 4,000 people who were injured or lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to the Post and Courier.

Corporate Legal Times once named him one of the nation's five most feared and respected plaintiffs' lawyers. He taught as a lecturer for three semesters at Duke University School of Law, was named Best Lawyers' Lawyer of the Year in 2013, ranked in Chambers USA's top tier from 2019 onward, and in August 2018 received the South Carolina Association for Justice's Founders' Award at its annual convention in Hilton Head, five years after Motley received the same honor. "Joe is a legendary champion for justice and his career has been an inspiration to the entire legal community," SCAJ president Hugh McAngus Jr. said at the time.

Rice gave much of what he built back to the school that trained him. In 2013 he created the Ronald L. Motley Memorial Scholarship Fund and a civil litigation training program honoring his late partner. In November 2023 he and his family donated $30 million to the University of South Carolina, funding new scholarships and endowed professorships; the university renamed its law school the Joseph F. Rice School of Law; in May 2026, months before his death, the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws. "My hope is that this worthy cause will inspire and bring out the best in generations of future lawyers," Rice said of the gift.

Away from the negotiating table, Rice built Bulls Bay Golf Club in Awendaw, was a longtime supporter of USC Gamecock athletics, and in 2023 held a partial stake through the Ocean Reef Racing syndicate in Confidence Game, a colt that ran tenth in the Kentucky Derby. He described his approach to opposing counsel plainly: "Always remember the person you're negotiating with, you'll see again." Of his life outside the office, he once said: "I don't live a complicated life. Professionally I do, but not personally."

Tributes followed from across the legal profession his firm had helped build. Motley Rice attorney Kevin Dean called him "a titan in the legal field whose fierce advocacy, brilliant legal mind and relentless pursuit of justice changed countless lives," according to ABC News 4. Former state senator and Motley Rice attorney Marlon Kimpson said Rice "created legal theories to hold wrongdoers accountable that will be written about in the annals of history," and Charleston attorney Randy Lowell called him "a lion among lawyers, well respected across the country by all sides of any issue."

He is survived by his wife, Lisa Summer Rice; his daughter and law partner, Ann E. Rice Ervin; his son-in-law, R. Tucker Ervin; his grandson, Beckett Rice Ervin; his sister, Ann Rice Phillips; and his brother, Donnie D. Rice III. A funeral and celebration of his life was held September 14, 2026, at the Charleston Gaillard Center, according to the Post and Courier.

Rice spent nearly five decades turning a seat at the negotiating table into leverage for people who had none: asbestos workers, Gulf Coast fishing families, families harmed by the opioid crisis, relatives of September 11 victims. What he built remains in tangible form: a law school in Columbia that now carries his name, scholarships for students who could not otherwise afford it, a golf course cut into the Lowcountry pines, and a firm of more than a hundred lawyers still working the cases he believed mattered.