William O. Douglas

“ A trial is not a game of blind man's buff; and the trial judge-particularly in a case where he himself is the trier of the facts upon which he is to pronounce the law-need not blindfold himself by failing to call an available vital witness simply because the parties, for reasons of trial tactics, choose to withhold his testimony. ”

“ While a court room is not a laboratory for the scientific pursuit of truth, a trial judge is surely not confined to an account obviously fragmentary, of the circumstances of a happening, here the meagre testimony of Johnson, when he has at his command the means of exploring them fully, or at least more fully, before passing legal judgment. ”

“ The crux of the difficulty is that an industrial injury such as the petitioner suffered is as to interstate railroad employees and seamen still determined by the archaic law of negligence instead of by a just system of workmen's compensation. Occurrences like the one now in controversy are inherent in industrial employment and to make liability depend on a finding of 'negligence' is to pursue unreality. England abolished negligence as the basis of liability fifty years ago. ”