William Prosser of Berkeley is generally cited as the most influential academic figure in the emergence of a liberal torts jurisprudence in the U.S. after 1950, in particular in the field of products liability; generations of law students learned the subject from Prosser on Torts. Anyone with an interest in this period will want to be aware of the series of publications by Christopher Robinette (Widener and TortsProf) based on the discovery of Prosser's own teaching notebook. An introduction is here.