No-Fault Insurance

University of Virginia Law Professor Jeffrey O' Connell '51 a co-author of the 1966 book Basic Protection for the Traffic Victim. is credited with starting the debate over no-fault auto insurance. No-fault eliminates expensive, prolonged legal wrangling and assures the victim a prompt settlement. (For that reason the idea is not universally popular with lawyers.) A subsequent volume by O''Connell extended no-fault to medical malpractice and product liability. Today 22 states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of no-fault auto insurance.

Thanks to O'Connell we have accidents without lawyers.