Arthur Goldberg

“ Also, if I believed that Judge Weinfeld had discretion to tax costs for travel beyond the '100-mile limit,' I would agree that he did not abuse his discretion in reducing the travel allowances of the defendant's witnesses to the equivalent of mileage for 100 miles.
But I do not agree that the 100-mile limit is a matter for even the narrow discretion which the Court would allow the lower federal courts to exercise. I would not depart from the strong precedents and long-continued custom that the 100-mile rule is a limitation to be uniformly observed and not to be departed from in taxing costs. ”

“ It has not been accident that the American litigant must bear his own cost of counsel and other trial expense save for minimal court costs, but a deliberate choice to ensure that access to the courts be not effectively denied those of moderate means.' 324 F.2d 359, 365.
No undue burden is imposed upon a litigant by the American rule, for depositions may be taken of witnesses who live outside the district where a case is pending. If the litigant feels that the personal appearance in court of such a witness is necessary, it is reasonable that he bear the cost involved. ”

“ Judge Smith succinctly summarized the rationale of the dissenters in stating that the decision of the majority of the Court of Appeals
'not only breaks with the overwhelming weight of authority, and creates a different rule for costs in civil cases from that in admiralty, but also, as the majority indeed appears to admit, abandons the traditional scheme of costs in American courts to turn in the direction of the English practice of making the unsuccessful litigant pay his opponent's litigation expense as well as his own. ”