James E. Ludlam, one of the founders of healthcare law who helped shape California's healthcare environment during the last half of the 20th century, has died. He was 93.
Ludlam, who has been called the "dean" and the "godfather" of healthcare lawyers, died Tuesday in the nursing facility at the Pasadena retirement home where he lived, said his son, Chuck. The cause of death was not known.
"He's kind of acknowledged as the individual that founded the specialty of healthcare law," J. Robert Liset, a longtime partner of Ludlam who heads the healthcare practice at Musick, Peeler & Garrett in Los Angeles, told The Times last week. "He's been a real driver and force in the industry."
Liset said Ludlam probably will be best remembered as one of the principal authors of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975, which alleviated a crisis in California because physicians were leaving the state and giving up their practices over prohibitively high malpractice insurance premiums caused by huge jury awards.
The landmark legislation, which brought down malpractice insurance premiums in California and, among other things, set a limit of $250,000 on damages for pain and suffering, is considered a national model for tort reform.
A 1939 Harvard Law School graduate, Ludlam was given his first healthcare case in January 1940: handling a complicated tax matter for what is now Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.
The assignment came on the same day he passed the California bar exam and reported for work at the law firm now known as Musick, Peeler & Garrett and where he remained throughout his career.
Beginning with that first case, Ludlam became a leader in efforts to strengthen the tax-exempt status of nonprofit hospitals and launched a nearly 70-year career in the field of healthcare law.
Ludlam, according to a 2002 article in Modern Healthcare, handled "thousands of healthcare cases and clients, almost single-handedly creating a legal specialty that is now so highly populated by busy lawyers he joked about having his own personal alumni association."
"When he started practicing in 1940, there was no specialty of healthcare law," Liset said. "It was lawyers who served on boards of directors of hospitals who did the work pro bono. Now, for example, the national Health Lawyers Assn. has grown to 10,000 members."
