Louis Spencer Epes (12 January 1882–14 February 1935), judge of the State Corporation Commission and of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, was born in the Prince William County town of Greenwich and was the son of Joanna Tyler Spencer Epes and Theodorick Pryor Epes, a Presbyterian minister. His uncle, James Fletcher Epes, served two terms in the House of Representatives. Among his cousins, Branch Jones Epes was a member of the Convention of 1901–1902, and Sydney Parham Epes sat in the House of Representatives. After graduating from Hoge Military Academy, in Blackstone, Epes received an A.B. from Hampden-Sydney College in 1900 and a B.S. and M.A. in 1901. He taught for two years at Horner Military Academy, in Oxford, North Carolina, served as commandant of cadets at West Kentucky College, in Mayfield, from 1903 to 1904, and operated a private preparatory school in Helena, Arkansas, from 1904 to 1906. Epes entered the law school of Washington and Lee University in 1906 and graduated two years later. Beginning in 1908, he practiced law in Blackstone, where on 5 November 1914 he married Julia Pegram Bagley. They had one daughter.

In 1911 Epes won election to the first of four consecutive two-year terms as mayor of Blackstone. He was not a candidate in 1917 and he did not appear on the ballot, but a plurality of voters wrote in his name anyway. Epes resigned in July 1918 to enlist in the army during World War I. He attended the field artillery officers training school at Camp Zachary Taylor, in Kentucky. He did not receive a commission or serve in Europe and was discharged after the war ended.

In 1919 Epes declined an offer to join the law faculty at Washington and Lee, of which he was a longtime member of the board. He won election to the Senate of Virginia that year from the district comprising the counties of Amelia, Cumberland, Lunenburg, Nottoway, and Prince Edward; he was reelected in 1923 when the district included Powhatan County instead of Cumberland County. He served on several minor committees and on the Committees on Fish and Game, on Moral and Social Welfare, and on Public Institutions and Education. During his second term Epes joined the influential Committees on Courts of Justice and on Finance. In the campaign before a 1923 referendum on whether to finance highway construction with bonds or taxes on gasoline, he favored the pay-as-you-go taxation plan of the new party chair, Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966), who became governor in 1926.

Epes ran for and was elected to the State Corporation Commission in October 1925. He took his seat early, on 16 November, under a gubernatorial appointment after the judge he succeeded resigned before the end of the term. The commission issued charters to new corporations and regulated corporate actions, including rates that common carriers and public utilities charged. Epes lectured at the University of Virginia in March 1929 on the "Valuation of the Property of Public Service Companies as Related to Rate Making." He chaired the three-member commission in 1929 and wrote the opinion in one of the most important cases that came before the commission during his tenure. In November 1929, in an unusual rebuke to the business community, Epes published a long opinion asserting that fire and lightning insurance companies in Virginia earned profits in excess of what was reasonable. He also expressed his views on partisan politics while serving on the commission. Epes supported the reorganization of the state government that Byrd proposed, including restructuring state tax policy, and he publicly advocated one-party government in Virginia in the interest of maintaining white supremacy.

On 5 November 1929 the governor appointed Epes to a vacancy on the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. He was sworn in on 20 November, and on 20 January 1930 the General Assembly elected him to serve the seven years remaining in a deceased judge's term, rather than to a full twelve-year term. Epes had an independent mind and filed dissenting opinions more often than any of the other judges. His most prominent opinion, however, and one of his last, was his concurring opinion in R. A. James Jr. v. C. H. Haymes (1935). In that case, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned a trial court's conviction of a newspaper publisher who had printed an editorial criticizing a contractor's slow progress in constructing a public road. Epes agreed with the ruling of the court but not with its application of the underlying principle. When a publication deals with a matter of public concern and makes statements not defamatory per se, the court absolved the defendant of liability if the editor had made the statements for a proper purpose in good faith and believed them true, even if they later proved to be untrue. Epes went further in defense of journalistic freedom and wrote, "The newspaper or person is not an insurer of the truth of the facts stated by him," an opinion that earned him a long, favorable editorial in Douglas Southall Freeman's Richmond News Leader.

Louis Spencer Epes was at work in his Richmond office on 14 February 1935 when he died following a heart attack. He was buried in Lakeview Cemetery, in Blackstone, where the following week the city council named the public library in his honor.

Sources Consulted:
Biography in A. B. Cummins, Nottoway County, Virginia: Founding and Development with Biographical Sketches (1970), 118–119; Military Service Records (with self-reported birth date); Nottoway Co. Marriage Register; Blackstone Courier, 23 May, 13 June 1913, 6 Nov. 1914, 15 June 1917, 22 June 1917, 21 Mar. 1919, 8 Aug. 1919, 15 Aug. 1919; Richmond News Leader, 24 Oct. 1922, 25 Oct. 1924, 14 Jan. 1925, 4 Feb. 1925, 13 Feb. 1925, 3 Oct. 1925, 7 May 1928, 6 Nov. 1929, 21 Jan. 1935; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 30 June, 10 Nov. 1928, 6 Nov. 1929; Epes, "Valuation of the Property of Public Service Companies as Related to Rate Making," University of Virginia Record Extension Series 14 (Apr. 1930): 5–19; Commonwealth of Virginia v. Aetna Insurance Company et als., in State Corporation Commission Annual Report (1930), 26–158; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1930 sess., 41, 71–73; R. A. James Jr. v. C. H. Haymes (1935), Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, 163:873–890, with Epes's opinion on 889–890 (quotation on 890); Death Certificate, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; obituaries and account of funeral in Richmond News Leader, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Washington Post, all 15, 16 Feb. 1935, and Blackstone Courier Record, 22 Feb. 1935; editorial tributes in Richmond News Leader, 15 Feb. 1935, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 16 Feb. 1935; memorials in Washington and Lee University Alumni Magazine 10 (Mar. 1935): 5, 11, Record of the Hampden-Sydney Alumni Association 9 (Apr. 1935): 4, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9 Jan. 1936, Blackstone Courier Record special issue, 10 Jan. 1936, Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association (1936), 171–175 (portrait facing 171), and Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia (1936), 165:v–xi.

1924 Legislative photograph courtesy Visual Studies Collection, Library of Virginia.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Melinda Lewis.

How to cite this page:
Melinda Lewis, "Louis Spencer Epes (1882–1935)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2023 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Epes_Louis_Spencer, accessed [today's date]).

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