Hugo Black

“ The reason offered by the Court for compelling a civil defendant to incriminate himself or be imprisoned for contempt is that to do otherwise would be to accept testimony untested by cross-examination and thus extend 'a positive invitation to mutilate the truth a party offers to tell.' If punishment for contempt were the only method of protecting the other party and the trier from a one-sided, distorted version of the truth the substantial encroachment made by the majority on the privilege against self-incrimination might be somewhat more tolerable. ”

“ While it is true that a party can determine the area of his own disclosures on direct examination, the scope of permissible cross-examination is not restricted to the matters raised on direct but may include other and quite different matters if they will aid the court or jury to appraise the credibility of the witness and the probative value of his testimony. ”

“ Furthermore a party to a civil action, unlike the defendant in a criminal case, may be compelled by his adversary to take the stand and thus forced into a situation (as illustrated by this case) where he must claim the privilege or incriminate himself. By claiming his privilege he may well prejudice his case for reasons wholly unrelated to its merits. In order to mitigate this damage he may feel great compulsion, either on cross-examination by his own counsel or by taking the stand later on his own behalf, to dispel some of the impression created by the claim of privilege. ”