Spencer Le Van Kimball, legal scholar, insurance lawyer, and law school dean and professor, has died at the age of 85 in Utah.  Kimball was dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1968 to 1972, and also received his S.J.D. degree from Wisconsin.

Kimball, born in Thatcher, Arizona in 1918, made notable contributions to the field of law during his lifetime and was recognized both nationally and internationally for his work. He was director of the Wisconsin Statutes Revision Project and his work remains a model for insurance codes to this day. Kimball was one of the co-founders of AIDA, an international insurance law association. He was also the author of many works on insurance law and regulation.

In addition to his work at Wisconsin, he served as dean of the University of Utah Law School, law professor at the University of Michigan and University of Chicago, and executive director of the American Bar Foundation in Chicago.

Kimball's wife of 51 years, Kathryn Murphy Kimball, died in 1990. They had six children, in addition to 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. In 1994, he married Virginia Barrus Johnson, who died last month. With this marriage he added two more children to his family, along with seven more grandchildren and two more great-grandchildren.

After the death of his wife Kathryn, he retired to Salt Lake City, Utah, to live by the mountains and his siblings.

Submitted by on November 4, 2003

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