From the Wool-sack
| Publication year | 1990 |
| Pages | 1099 |
| Citation | Vol. 19 No. 6 Pg. 1099 |
1990, June, Pg. 1099. FROM THE WOOL-SACK
There's good news in the insurance world. Long-time readers of this column will recall that from time to time, I lament the effect my profession has had on the ability of insurance companies to become major art collectors. As the insurance companies repeatedly point out, were it not for lawyers and (on rare occasions, one supposes) the people the insurance companies insure, they would not have to spend the money they receive from premiums on lawyers and judgments, but could, as the Japanese do, spend it on acquiring works of art.
In 1987, Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Co. of Tokyo bought one of Van Gogh's sunflower paintings for $39.9 million. In so doing, it became the instant envy of every U.S. insurance company. U.S. insurance companies would like to become major art collectors but, instead, they have to use their hardearned premium dollars to pay lawyers to help them defend their insureds and, worse yet, pay judgments obtained against their insureds when they lose in litigation. The ability of the insurance companies to become major art collectors, I'm happy to report, will soon change, if a suit the companies have recently entered is successful.
In entering the suit, the companies have employed the same resourcefulness which enables them to decide which loophole in your policy applies to the claim you have just made to treasure lying on the bottom of the ocean. If successful, they will be able to contribute to the escalation of art prices in the world by their aggressive competition.
In 1858, the S.S. Central America went to the bottom of the ocean, leaving behind 125 survivors and taking to the bottom with it 425 souls and a huge cache of gold going east from the California gold fields.
After ten years of researching records about the loss, spending more than $10 million and combing the ocean bottom for the remains of the sunken ship, a group from Columbus, Ohio (the Columbus America Discovery Group), located the ship's remains in the summer of 1989. The Group's robot, "Nemo,"...
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