Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ As the cause of action is the damage not the detention of the money to be paid for it, it could be argued in a respectable Court, as late as 1886, that at common law, even as a matter of discretion, interest could not be allowed. ”

“ In The Atlas, 93 U.S. 302, 310 (23 L. Ed. 863) , the general rule is laid down that satisfaction for the injury sustained is the true rule of damages, and that by this is meant that the measure of compensation shall be equal to the amount of injury received, to be calculated for the actual loss occasioned by the collision, upon the principle that the sufferer is entitled to complete indemnification for his loss. Complete recompense for the injury is required. ”

“ If Congress has been accustomed to use a certain phrase with a more limited meaning than might be attributed to it by common practice it would be arbitrary to refuse to consider that fact when we come to interpret a statute. But as we have said the usage of Congress simply shows that it has spoken with careful precision, that its words mark the exact spot at which it stops, and that it distinguishes between the damages caused by the collision and the later loss caused by delay in paying for the first-between damages and 'the allowance of interest on damages' as it is putby Mr. ”

“ United States, 229 U.S. 373, 377, 33 S.C.t. 780, 57 L. Ed. 1232. But legal fiction never reached the height of holding a defendant bound to know the estimate that a jury would put upon the damage that he had caused. ”