Robert H. Jackson

“ Defendant's present position, which, for all we know, may or may not be shared by the Department of the Army, is that we do not need to settle the question as to whether defendant or the Government was the actual employer, that the effect of the war-time legislation was to set up a wholly new system of war production, which was neither private enterprise nor government operation, but an amalgamation of the two, which also prescribed a complete system of labor relation by statute which supercedes and precludes operation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. ”

“ The hearing of contentions as to disputed facts, the sorting of documents to select relevant provisions, ascertain their ultimate form and meaning in the case, the practical construction put on them by the parties and reduction of the mass of conflicting contentions as to fact and inference from facts, is a task primarily for a court of one judge, not for a court of nine. ”

“ There is substantial controversy as to the way those two parties, the Government and defendant in actual practice, construed their contracts, both sides of the controversy being based on events of which we are asked to take judicial notice or to spell out from contracts without the tests which trial affords. The plaintiffs in turn seek to counteract whatever inferences may be drawn from the defendant's version of dealings between defendant and the Government by contrary inferences from dealings between employees and the defendant. ”