[5]: 244 He enjoyed the company of deans L. Dale Coffman at UCLA Law and David E. Snodgrass at Hastings, who shared his conservative views.
[5]: 245 He suddenly announced his resignation, effective immediately, in the middle of the 1960–1961 school year rather than face a regular five-year review of his deanship before the campus Budget Committee, then had to be talked into finishing the school year while the university searched for his replacement.
[5]: 245–246 On the way out, he could not resist taking potshots which confirmed his personality flaws, marred his legacy at Berkeley, and were regarded as an unfortunate coda to an otherwise successful deanship.
[5]: 245–246 In oral remarks before the faculty, he attacked the institutional weakness of the dean of the law school by calling himself "a straw man, a stooge, a tailor's dummy, and a figurehead, without any authority or power whatsoever".
"[5]: 246 Upon leaving Berkeley in 1961, Prosser became a member of the faculty at Hastings and continued to teach law there until his death in 1972.
By the time his influential article The Assault on the Citadel (Strict Liability to the Consumer)[6] was published in 1960, the New Jersey Supreme Court fulfilled his prediction, holding in Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors that manufacturers implicitly warrantied their products against personal injury to all users.