Gray Tool Co. v. Humble Oil & Refining Co.

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge.

Its suit for patent infringement dismissed on motion for summary judgment, plaintiff is here insisting: that this is another of those all too numerous instances of the misuse of the summary judgment procedure to cut a trial short; that here, as so often before, it has served only to prove that short cutting of trials is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that in the conduct of trials, as in other endeavors, it is quite often true that the longest way around is the shortest way through. 1

Appellant points to the abortion, by failure to use it, of the great…