The Master of Negotiation

For several years, through the ups and downs of proposed federal regulations that, in the end, fell short by one vote in Congress, Joe Rice had been testing ways to hold Big Tobacco accountable for its marketing campaigns, which he says targeted underage audiences. Finally, a breakthrough: A lawyer for the defense called Rice and asked the question he’d been waiting to hear. “Is there a way to handle this in a reasonable fashion?”

But the night before the meeting Rice had arranged with key negotiators, his co-counsel team members declined to attend, suspicious it was a setup. “So I went to the meeting with one of my partners, and I explained what had happened, that there was a certain amount of distrust,” says Rice, 71, a class action/mass torts attorney and co-founder of Motley Rice. “I didn’t give up. I said, ‘Look, we got one shot at having a meeting where you bring your CEOs. Something has to be on the table. You’ve got to come in and convince these attorneys general that you’re serious, that you’re legit, and that you’re not just playing them.’

“Fast-forward a month or so,” Rice continues. “We had the first meeting in the D.C. area, where the CEOs of the three largest manufacturers came. And coming out of that meeting, Philip Morris agreed that the Marlboro Man would retire, and R.J. Reynolds said that Joe Camel would retire. And that was the motivating concession to make the AGs believe that this group was, realistically, ready to address their conduct and what needed to be done to change the cycle of teenage smoking in this country.”

In 1998, the nation’s top tobacco companies consented to pay the states close to $250 billion to help treat lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses in the landmark Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, the largest civil settlement in U.S. history. 

Regarded as one of the nation’s most tenacious deal-makers, but also one of the most affable, Rice went on to negotiate multibillion-dollar settlements with, among other opponents: BP (in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) and Volkswagen (for alleged fraudulent diesel emissions tactics in the nation’s largest auto-related consumer class action settlement). 

An easygoing Southern gentleman with an affinity for sweet tea—and, after hours, a good whiskey—Rice often surprises his guests with details of personal conversations from months earlier and demonstrates a degree of humility not expected of someone who, as his colleague Jayne Conroy, a plaintiff’s attorney at Simmons Hanly Conroy in New York City, puts it, “is considered the foremost negotiator in our world of complex litigation.”

Conroy, who partnered with Rice on cases involving 9/11, BP and more, is now co-lead with him in pending national opioid litigation. “He never raises his voice or demeans his opponents,” she says. “He wins on the facts and the law, and he has a genius ability to find exactly the right arguments to persuade defendants to settle for the highest dollar amounts. … His reputation in that area is unparalleled, and there is no significant corporation in the U.S. that would not be concerned when Joe Rice appears in a litigation.”

Rice, however, is quick to clarify an oft-repeated media phrase naming him one of the “most feared and respected plaintiff’s lawyers in corporate America.” 

“I think the fear part is really: ‘If he gets involved in a case, you know it’s going to be serious,’” he explains. “You know it’s going to be big.’”

The Columbia-born son of a textile worker whose work shuffled the family from one Carolina community to another, Rice was greatly influenced by his grandfather, a mill paymaster with unfulfilled dreams. “When he could scrounge together the money, he would go to the bookstore and buy law books and just read them like other people would read novels,” Rice remembers. “I think that he’d be proud that I still remember where I came from, and I got to do what I do.” 

Selected to serve on a task force that attended state education meetings in high school, Rice got to know the attorneys both there and in Gastonia, and developed a respect for the profession despite his mixed emotions about whether to become a minister or a lawyer. Working summers with local attorneys skewed his interest, but there was one problem, he admits: “I’d had a real good time my freshman and sophomore year, so my grades were probably not as good as they needed to be.” 

His second chance came in the form of a summer program at the University of South Carolina School of Law. After graduating in 1979, Rice was two weeks away from the bar exam and set to hang his shingle in North Myrtle Beach, when he got a call that changed the direction of his life. Ron Motley, an attorney at Blatt & Fales in Barnwell, wanted to hire him for a litigation matter involving the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods. 

About 18 months after joining, Motley asked Rice to meet him at the office on a Sunday. Motioning to the opening statements, depositions and exhibits splayed across the conference room table, Motley announced, “I want you to read these, and then I’ll come back up here tonight and we’ll talk about it.”

Hours later, when Motley returned, his protege asked, “I understand what this litigation is about, in general. But why am I doing this?”

“I’ve got a trial in Minnesota next Monday,” his boss announced. “And you’re going to try the case.”

“So that’s how I got introduced to asbestos litigation,” says Rice, who won the trial with Mike Polk. “It was nerve-racking … but I enjoyed it, and I really felt comfortable once I got into the rhythm of it. From then on, I started doing asbestos litigation as my primary responsibility.” 

Helping the little guy came naturally to Rice, who had driven forklifts and thrown yarn working third shift in textile mills. “I grew up working with working-class people, and I knew what they were going through. I knew what hard work was about. Most of these people that I was representing were insulators or pipe fitters. I really felt that I was their voice.”

Over the next decade, as the number of consolidated asbestos cases grew, Motley managed the trial process while Rice became the negotiator outside the courtroom. He traces his mediation skills back to his days of working in textiles. “Sometimes the guy driving the forklift truck and the guy setting the machines up were not necessarily buddies. If one was late, it hurt the other one, and we had some negotiation to do in a situation like that.

“I’ve always followed the theory that I’m never going to get a resolution of my problems unless I address what the other side’s problems are as well. You can’t just go into it thinking all you can do is win and conquer. There’s got to be a spirit of compromise and resolution, and that’s been my marker, my backbone, of doing settlements.”

Carl Solomon, a personal injury and mass torts attorney in Columbia, has teamed up with Rice several times since their first case: the Graniteville train collision. “You know that he is in the room, but that does not mean that he tries to dominate the room in any way—although it often happens just because what he says resonates and makes sense, and he can build coalitions and get things done. … When there is conflict, he is absolutely a formidable fellow, but he doesn’t start there, and he doesn’t usually seek that.”

What’s more, Solomon says, “Joe has the ability to analyze things at levels that are kind of unprecedented, even amongst lawyers operating at a high level. That’s one of the reasons why he’s able to be involved in so many large and complicated resolutions, many of which don’t have a roadmap. … He has an ability to see angles that most of us don’t know exist.”

In Rice, Solomon also sees someone who is true to his humble roots. Recently, when the two attorneys returned from a New York mediation session that ran long and bumped Solomon off his flight, Rice welcomed his colleague on his private plane. Upon landing, Solomon says, “He still had his old truck waiting there to get in and go home. To me, that’s kind of who Joe is. He’s ascertained incredible heights and victories, but he has never forgotten who he is or failed to appreciate what it took for him to get there.”

On the heels of the asbestos cases came the long-shot tobacco litigation. “I always look at tobacco as being the case that no one gave us a chance to win. Everyone thought we were crazy,” Rice says. “And we won it in a way that nobody ever imagined.”

But the one that has affected him most on an emotional level has been his 9/11 cases. He’s still involved in ongoing litigation against the alleged financiers of 9/11 and material supporters of al Qaeda. “Ron felt that one way to address terrorism was to bankrupt the terrorist groups,” Rice recalls. “So that’s when we started filing lawsuits against the terrorist groups in Saudi Arabia and others, to try to chase down where the money was coming from to fund these terrorist groups and cut the money off.”

The Motley-Rice team was successful in securing personal settlements for 60 families against the TSA and airlines, but listening to their stories and seeing their suffering was almost too much. At one mediation session, a 6-year-old arrived with his dad’s jacket. “The last time he ever saw his daddy was him leaving the house, putting on his sport coat. And he went to work and never came home,” Rice says. “Those were the hardest negotiations I ever did.”

Serving as co-lead negotiator and reaching two multibillion-dollar settlements in the BP litigation, he says, by comparison. Same thing with VW. “It’s just been a whirlwind, but it’s been 40 years.”

In 1987, Rice moved his practice from Barnwell to Mount Pleasant, joining Motley in Blatt & Fales’ office. But in the early 2000s, when, according to Rice, some colleagues chose to squirrel away fees from the Big Tobacco wins rather than reinvest in the business, he and his mentor left to create Motley Rice in a five-story brick building overlooking downtown Charleston on the banks of the Cooper River. The firm now operates nine office locations with 130 fulltime attorneys in eight states. Motley passed away in 2013. 

Currently, Rice is working on the National Prescription Opiate MDL, with a pending settlement of more than $50 billion, aimed at alleged over-distribution and deceptive marketing; the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams MDL that alleges toxic “forever chemicals” contaminated public drinking water; and litigation on behalf of Camp Lejeune residents and workers exposed to toxic water believed to cause health problems. He is also preparing to battle social media giants that use algorithms targeting children.

“You’re having substantial disruption in our school system where the schools are having to deal with psychological problems and depression and safety. … We felt like it was a product that was being sold, an addictive product that caused bad results—the same thing it was with the cigarette,” Rice says. 

“AI has been dropped on top of that, and we’re seeing much more manipulation and stealing of identities and stealing of voices and just all kinds of things that we never imagined 15 years ago. What may happen, I don’t know, but I know that I’ve got a 9-year-old grandson and I watch him on his iPad. It’s restricted in any way possible, but it’s an addictive toy.”

A self-proclaimed “frustrated cowboy,” Rice has filled his office with Western decor: cowhide rugs, a cozy fireplace, photos of his beloved horses and dogs. Since law school, he’s saddled up as often as possible; his only child, Ann E. Rice Ervin, 40, who handles medical device cases at Motley Rice, is a competitive hunter-jumper.

Riding on his farms in Awendaw and Jamestown offers a calming counterbalance to a high-stakes practice. “I’ll be out riding with a buddy of mine,” Rice says, “and he’ll stop and say, ‘Did you hear that?’ I’ll say, ‘I didn’t hear anything.’ And he’ll say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’”

What happened on Feb. 29, 2020, however, threatened to sideline Rice’s favorite hobby. While riding a new horse, he took an awkward fall, broke 10 ribs on his left side, punctured his spleen and a lung, and underwent a complex surgery that included screwing his ribs back together with titanium strips. By the end of the year, he was riding again and continues to do so, usually with a cigar between his teeth. 

“I do enjoy relaxing with a good cigar and a cocktail, no doubt about it,” he says with a chuckle. “Everybody says, ‘Well, you sued over cigarettes and there’s tobacco in that.’ I said, ‘I sued the cigarette industry. I didn’t sue the cigar industry.’”

If These Walls Could Listen

In the summer of 2024, Joe Rice was sitting in a bar in the Bahamas, wearing a bathing suit and sipping a Goombay Smash, when one of his friends struck up a conversation with the young couple beside them. Suddenly, the laidback Rice perked up. The man had just graduated from the newly renamed Joseph F. Rice School of Law and, unaware that its namesake was eavesdropping, praised the school for recent increases in scholarship monies and activities. 

“I’m sitting there listening to this kid talk about what changes I’ve made at the law school,” Rice recalls. “That’s when it hits you. That’s when you know you’ve done something right.”

The new signage for Rice’s alma mater was unveiled in late 2023, along with a $30 million gift from Rice’s family to fund additional scholarships, professorships, and the Lisa S. Rice and Ann E. Rice Ervin Child Advocacy Award Endowment, which provides stipends for students at the Children’s Law Center and bears the names of his wife and daughter, both alumni and advocates for abused and neglected kids. 

“Considering my career at South Carolina—I always say I slid in the back door of law school—and now I have my name on the school,” says Rice. “It’s somewhat surreal.”