en building. More than one hundred thousand
persons perished, and the loss of property is estimated by Kobo-Dogarque
at one and a half million _drusoes_. On more than two-thirds of this
enormous sum the insurance companies had laid bets, and the greater part
of it they refused to pay. In justification they pointed out that the deed
performed by the pig was "an act of God," who in the analogous instance of
the express companies had been specifically forbidden to take any action
affecting the interests of parties to a contract, or the result of an
agreed undertaking.

In the ensuing litigation their attorneys cited two notable precedents. A
few years before the San Francisco disaster, another American city had
experienced a similar one through the upsetting of a lamp by the kick of a
cow. In that case, also, the insurance companies had successfully denied
their liability on the ground that the cow, manifestly incited by some
supernatural power, had unlawfully influenced the result of a wager to
which she was not a party. The companies defendant had contended that the
recourse of the property-owners was against, not them, but the owner of
the cow. In his decision sustaining that view and dismissing the case, a
learned judge (afterward president of one of the defendant companies) had
in the legal phraseology of the period pronounced the action of the cow an
obvious and flagrant instance of unwarrantable intervention. Kobo-Dogarque
believes that this decision was afterward reversed by an appellate court
of contrary political complexion and the companies were compelled to
compromise, but of this there is no record. It is certain that in the San
Francisco case the precedent was urged.

Another precedent which the companies cited with particular emphasis
related to an unfortunate occurrence at a famous millionaires' club in
London, the capital of the renowned king, John Bui. A gentleman passing in
the street fell in a fit and was carried into the club in convulsions. Two
members promptly made a bet upon his life. A physician who chanced to be
present set to work upon the patient, when one of the members who had laid
the wager came forward and restrained him, saying: "Sir, I beg that you
will attend to your own business. I have my money on that fit."

Doubtless these two notable precedents did not constitute the entire case
of the defendants in the San Francisco insurance litigation, but the
additional pleas are lost to us.