Joel R. Rhine

Joel Rhine has more than three decades of experience in complex litigation, including catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases, construction accidents and defects, trucking accidents, products liability, class actions and mass torts.  After law school, Mr. Rhine began private practice with the mega-firm Hunton & Williams, working on some of the country’s largest cases, including two nuclear power plant construction cases. Mr. Rhine thereafter joined his extended family in Wilmington, North Carolina and at the age of 30, promptly obtained an eight-figure verdict in Federal Court, which, at the time, was the largest verdict in New Hanover County history.  His practice progressed steadily from there, recovering hundreds of millions for his clients.  

Mr. Rhine gained a national reputation in the EIFS or Synthetic Stucco fiasco, described by an assistant attorney general as “the largest consumer problem ever to hit North Carolina.”  Mr. Rhine filed the first EIFS case and obtained the first multi-million-dollar verdict against a manufacturer of this product. After Mr. Rhine’s team obtained this EIFS verdict, cases settled nationwide, giving thousands of homeowners adequate funds to repair their homes. 

Following EIFS, Mr. Rhine has handled cases throughout the United States and locally.  He is well known for his work dismantling defense scientists and engineers at deposition and on the stand.

In recent years, Mr. Rhine and his firm have take up the cause of young people who have been sexually abused in schools, camps, and juvenile detention facilities.

Mr. Rhine’s recent results include a multi-million-dollar award against the New Hanover County Board of Education after one of its teachers of the year was found to have brazenly preyed upon dozens of male students with no consequences. He and his firm are now representing additional survivors of that teacher, as well as young women whose cases against a middle school band instructor would have been precluded if not for the Safe Child Act, recently found to be constitutional by the N.C. Supreme Court. Rhine is also part of a team seeking justice for juveniles abused in camps in Western N.C., and on behalf of hundreds of adults who were abused as teens in juvenile justice facilities in Maryland.  Rhine successfully handled a wrongful death case against the City of Charlotte and American Airlines for the death of a ramp worker who was killed when his tug struck a piece of luggage on a dark tarmac. He was instrumental in prosecuting class actions on behalf of military families living in substandard housing units managed by private companies at Camp Lejeune and other bases. Mr. Rhine received a significant resolution for the tenant who was forced to jump from her rooming house window when a fire broke out and the facility had no fire extinguishers or smoke detectors. Mr. Rhine has really enjoyed his role in numerous data breach and other class actions throughout the country.

Presently, Mr., Rhine is involved in several significant water contamination cases. Rhine and co-counsel represent more than 20,000 individuals who were exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune—and now suffer the brutal health consequences in the form of kidney cancer and the like. The firm also acts as counsel in the PFAS and AFFF litigation being waged by the state of North Carolina against companies which despoiled our waters with forever chemicals.   

Mr. Rhine has been repeatedly recognized as a leader in the legal profession.  He has been named a “Super Lawyer” for over a decade and has been chosen as one of North Carolina’s Top 100 for several years.  He is listed among the nation’s “Best Lawyers,” and Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite; he holds an AV rating on Martindale Hubbell. Rhine Law Firm is ranked as a Tier 1 Best Firm by U.S. News.

Mr. Rhine received his Juris Doctor degree in 1988 from Wake Forest University School of Law, where he was elected to The Wake Forest Law Review. He was published twice in the Law Review while a student and received the Wake Forest Law Review award.

Mr. Rhine received a B.A from the University of Tampa, where he received an academic scholarship, was inducted into four honor societies, was awarded the Political Science Graduate Award for attaining the highest GPA among Political Science graduates, and lettered on the varsity baseball team.