Valliant was born on June 14, 1838, at Moulton, Alabama.
His father, Denton Hurlock Valliant, a native of Tennessee, was descended from John Valliant, a Londoner of French parentage, who settled on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the seventeenth century, and from Jonathan Hurlock who came to the same section of Maryland from England in the first half of the eighteenth century.
His mother, before marriage Narcissa Kilpatrick, a native of Tennessee, was of Irish and Scottish ancestry.
Education
An orphan at six, Valliant, helped by relatives, received a good education, first at private schools, then at the University of Mississippi, where he was graduated in 1856, and later at the Cumberland University Law School in Tennessee, where he was graduated in 1858.
Career
In 1858, when the fascinating William Walker was starting one of his Nicaraguan expeditions, Valliant joined a band of Walker's "emigrants" and embarked by the river for New Orleans, but because of lack of funds was put off the boat with his companions at Memphis. In later years Valliant expressed religious thankfulness for the abortive outcome of this youthful adventure. After settling at the prosperous river town of Greenville, Miss. , he was admitted to the bar in 1859, and practiced law until the Civil War. In 1861, he entered the Confederate military service.
At the battle of Shiloh, as captain of Company I, 22nd Mississippi Regiment, he was for a while in command of that regiment because all his ranking officers had been killed or wounded. Shortly afterward, shattered in health and with sight permanently impaired, he returned to Greenville, where eventually, with restored health, he resumed his career as a lawyer, serving for a term as chancellor of his district. In 1874, partly because of dissatisfaction with the progress of reconstruction, he left Mississippi, went to St. Louis.
Appointed by the governor in 1886 to a temporary judgeship on the circuit court of St. Louis, in the fall of that year he was elected judge of the same court for a constitutional term of six years and re-elected in 1892. In 1898, while still a circuit judge, he was elected for a four-year term to fill a vacancy in the supreme court of Missouri, and in 1902 was reelected for another term of ten years. After twenty-six years of useful public service in Missouri, he finally retired December 31, 1912, broken in health, but still alert mentally and beloved by the legal profession. He died at Greenville; his body was taken to St. Louis and buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
Achievements
Leroy Branch Valliant acquired considerable reputation as a lawyer and as a public speaker.
Valliant's judicial activities on the Missouri supreme court are set forth in 147-247 Missouri Reports. As a judge, he was sound rather than brilliant. He wrote the majority opinion of the court in Morgan vs. Wabash Railroad Company (1900), 159 Missouri, 262, which after years of controversy finally established the so-called humanitarian doctrine as a Missouri exception to the rather harsh English common-law rule of contributory negligence.
Another of his important opinions was in the case of State ex rel. Koeln vs. Lesser (1911), 237 Missouri, 310, holding that under the taxation statutes of Missouri the stocks in non-Missouri corporations, even if owned by Missouri residents, are not subject to taxation as personal property in Missouri.
Connections
In October 1862, Valliant had married Theodosia Taylor Worthington of Leota Landing, Mississippi, who with their three sons survived him.
