jury contest. There was testimony that Cary six years old at the time of trialremembered little about the circumstances surrounding the harm-dealing occasion and, at different times, reported widely varying accounts of the event. He was neither necessary nor expected to be called as a witness. I would hence hold that the trial court's ruling, which was within reason and based on evidence, cannot be termed abusive of its discretion. The three-step analysis I counsel for adoption today will ensure a balanced nisi prius consideration of litigants' competing fundamental-law interests. It also militates strongly for affirmance of the exclusion ruling.
¶ 24 The court's opinion appears grossly unfair in yet another respect. Even though the rule announced by the opinion was unknown at the time of this trial, today'sthe patently erroneous conclusion that because the child is non sui juris and the next friend a nonparty, the lawyer in the case can be cast in the role of master of litigation. Nothing can be farther from legal reality.

Some Oklahoma pronouncements seem encrusted with similarly imprecise language as that in category 1, supra. (a) In Smittle v. Eberle, Okl., 353 P.2d 121, 123 (1960), the court states that a parent, who, as next friend, successfully prosecutes a tort action in behalf of his child "is not regarded as a party or privy thereto" and hence is not estopped from pressing a separate action in his own name for injury to the parental status. The child in Smittle, although not as a party, was the only person who