Ed Rudloff, ’72

Trial Lawyer, Rudloff, Wood, and Barrows

Ed Rudloff ’72 has been to jury verdict more than 100 times, but when asked for his most memorable case, he reaches back to his post-law school days as a prosecutor in San Francisco. That’s when he helped put away four defendants in the notorious Golden Dragon Massacre involving the killing of five people and wounding of 11.

“If someone said to me when I was in the district attorney’s office, ‘You’re going to be working for insurance companies,’ I would have said, ‘You’re nuts.” Rudloff now says. “I have absolutely no affinity or relationship with the insurance industry at all.”

But that in fact is where Rudloff found his niche after six years as a prosecutor, and today he tries cases for some of the biggest names in insurance. His firm, Rudloff, Wood & Barrows, specializes in property insurance law, often litigating for carriers in claim disputes arising from disasters like the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, major fires, and hurricanes.

Representing an industry that comes in for its share of public abuse, Rudloff has had to get used to being on the defensive. He finds himself well-practiced in explaining that “there is some good in the insurance industry,” he says. “Most jurors are very skeptical. It takes a lot to win them over. I try to put on a smiley face and let them know that insurance companies are really made of people like you and me…. It’s very difficult.” Nonetheless, he manages to win more cases than he loses, a lot more, and that keeps the likes of Travelers and Farmers and State Farm coming back.

The challenges of reaching jury verdict more than 100 times, he said, add up in stress. “It has a way of aging you far too quickly. It’s very high pressure. It puts a lot of years on you.”