Bellegarde

— This is an action for “ willfully, recklessly, and without care or caution dashing huge car-loads of rock and earth, weighing many tons, around and against ” certain piles supporting the plaintiff's house, whereby these supports of the house were forced from their position, and that structure was pitched into the water, which surrounded it, the result being, as claimed, the damages for which the suit is brought.

The answer denies these allegations, and claims that what was done by the defendant was justifiable in prosecuting certain street-work under its contract with the city and county of San Francisco; that the injury resulted, not from carelessness or negligence, but from the dumping of rock and earth into the mud and water across a part of the waters of the bay of San Francisco, in order to construct a street of said city called Railroad Avenue; and that this dumping of rock and earth onto the soft bottom of the bay, where the mud lay very deep, had the natural and inevitable effect to force out the mud from the sides of this avenue as it was being constructed of the rock and earth, so as to impinge upon the piles supporting the plaintiff's house, and without fault of the…