Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1909 — Unprecedented. [ARTICLE]

Unprecedented.

Pierre Cartier, a Parisian jeweler, told this story in Washington to show how easy it is to entrap experts —either of jewelry or law: "A friend of mine, at a recent dinner in Paris, eat next to an eminent lawyer, to whom he said: "I- would like your opinion oh a knotty point of law. My uncle has a peacock and last fall it got into a neighbor’s garden and laid an egg there. The neighbor claimed the egg, and my uncle claimed it, too. What is the law on the •question?” * “ ‘lt’s an easy question to settle,’ said the lawyer, with a patronizing smile. ‘Admitting that the egg was laid on the neighbor’s ground, the neighbor, nevertheless, has no claim to it unless he can prove that the owner of the bird took no steps to prevent it-from straying. In a precedent case ’ “ ‘Excuse me/ said the other man, *but this case has no precedent.* " ‘Well/ said the lawyer, ‘you know more law than I do. do you? I remember distinctly a precedent case where ’ “‘No, you don’t/ said the other. *You never heard before of a peacock laying an egg.’"