Prominent Greenville defense attorney dies of rare disease

A Greenville lawyer who nurtured the careers of dozens of attorneys while growing a third-generation law firm — one of the oldest in the city — has died.

James H. “Chip” Price IV died Sept. 12 after a year-long battle with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare disorder that causes scarring in the lungs. Price died at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, where he had received a double lung transplant months earlier. He was 70.

Price was an imposing presence at 6 feet 3 inches with eyebrows as big as caterpillars and a strong voice that at once commanded attention and engendered calm.

The Price legal lineage began with his grandfather James Sr., who represented Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Greenville native and professional baseball player banned from the sport after the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. The family tradition continued to James H. Price Jr., a circuit court judge, and now extends to a fourth generation, Chip’s son, James H. Price IV, and daughter Powers Price.

“Losing Chip is like driving down Poinsett Highway and Paris Mountain being gone,” said Frank Eppes, a longtime Greenville lawyer whose father, also named Frank, was a circuit court judge and state representative. “We all are dwarfed by him.”

Price spent his first three years as a prosecutor to obtain trial experience and then spent the next four decades on the other side, defending a host of people accused of crimes. His peers remembered him as an attorney who fought hard in the courtroom and, no matter how it turned out, shook hands and often went out for a drink.

Keith Morton, who retired last year as chief of the Fountain Inn Police Department, said he became friends with Price, then a prosecutor, when Morton worked for the Greenville Police Department. Even though Price sometimes defended people Morton arrested, their friendship continued through the decades.

Price was instrumental in founding the local and state Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

“He was ever mindful of the needs of others,” Morton said. “He was a true renaissance man.”

James Price IV said his father taught by example, not by words, although he remembered a favorite saying: “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

The younger Price’s interest in law came from watching his father in the courtroom and working with him for a year after college and before law school.

“Law school teaches you about the law but not how to be a lawyer,” the son said. “He was a gentleman lawyer.”

While Price III loved the law, he loved his family the most, his son said. The father was always there for his swim meets and supported his sister’s equestrian pursuits, mucking out the barn and smoking salmon for events. He and his wife, Jane, often went to concerts at the University of Georgia to visit Jason, their oldest son.

He had a wicked sense of humor, playing gags on young colleagues and having checks embossed with the name Equestrian Poverty Fund. When Chip was in Morocco for a worldwide Special Olympics event, someone offered to trade him a hundred or so camels for his wife, Jane.

Chip had some fun bargaining. He and Jane found the whole situation hilarious, Price IV said.

Price was also a Civil War buff and took the family on trips to visit battlefields. He offered free legal advice at Triune Mercy Center, which helps homeless people.

He loved basketball, both to play and to watch. Everyone knew not to schedule court during March Madness. He played in the Southern Textile League when he came back from the University of South Carolina, where he also studied law.

Eppes, who is about 10 years younger, didn’t play basketball with him often but knew he was ferocious. Morton, who did play basketball with Price, said, “There was lots of trash talking.”

After his father died, Price IV was in his office and realized it was arranged so that everywhere he looked there was a picture of a family member.

The family will hold a service once it’s safe, given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Price IV said.

“If one person were to get sick, Dad would have hated that,” Price said. “We’re trying to do what he would have wanted.”