Quote:
Originally posted by viet_mom
While it will depend on state/munipality laws, I'd love general thoughts on the legals of tree removal. The houses behind my house (and all others on my street) sit way up higher and many have ridiculously tall/thick trees at the far end of their back yards (abutting our back yards). The trees are always infringing on our side and we cut them back as best we can. This month, a HUGE trunk from the tree on my back neighbor's house crashed down on my property, hitting my fence and some other structures. I'm not looking for $$ to fix anything but the neighbor won't even remove the portions of their tree lying on top of my stuff. I finally just went out and did it myself, borrowing a chain saw and then cutting it up into small pieces to haul away. Strangely, the neighbor saw all this and suggested I (and other lowland neighbors) should foot the cost of removing the highland neighbors's big trees since we lowlanders are the ones who are going to suffer when the big trees fall on us. That doesn't seem right to me. Anyhow, in this area, it would cost me over $1,000 to just remove one of the big trees on my back neighbor's property. Thoughts?
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As you suspect, it's different in every state. In California, a tree is owned by the fee estate owner of the land on which the trunk sits. If the trunk straddles a property line, the tree is owned in joint tenancy by the two fee estate owners. The owner is liable for damages resulting from his or her negligence in relation to the tree. Note it is not strict liability; it's negligence. If you were to sue, you'd need to prove duty/breach/causation/damages -- it's not just "your tree, your problem." If a tree branch encroaches into the airspace of an adjacent owner, the adjacent owner can remove it at their sole cost, but cannot perform that work in a manner that endangers the health of the tree or the safety of the neighbors (e.g., by killing it outright or cutting flush all of the branches on one side of the tree, making it susceptible to falling backwards onto the owner's property). Your state may allow trespass damages for the fallen limb; I'm not sure California does.
As an aside, in California and potentially other states, a property owner who takes title by a deed making reference to parcel map (as opposed to metes and bounds), obtains a fee that encompasses not only their parcel, but also the portion of the adjacent public right-of-way to the centerline. In many cases, this means they are the fee owner of all land to the yellow line. Refer to the above rule and you'll discover that this means that the landowner, and not the city, is the "owner" of any "city trees" in the sidewalk tree strip. The public, city or county may have a right of access to the right-of-way, but this does not mean the trees are public property. It also does not mean that you can cut this tree down. But it does mean that you are potentially liable in negligence for the condition of the tree, if your state uses this regime, in the same way that a trip-and-fall on the sidewalk in front of your property can result in your premises liability even though you didn't build the sidewalk and you can't control access to it.
People have a weird relationship to trees. They think they live forever, and that if one falls, that's res ipsa loquitur that somebody (first the landowner, and then usually the city/county) could have and therefore should have done something to prevent it. Our laws are designed to allocate liability based on human behaviors, not to allocate liability amongst humans for acts of God. Your state legislature may view things in this way, and if so you may need to prepare yourself for a "sucks to be you" approach already adopted by your neighbor for the limb that's already fallen. But his suggestion about your responsibility to pay to remove the trees on his property because you're the one who stands to be hurt by them is asinine, and if your state legislature somehow agreed with that, I'd move to another state in protest.
I suggest you look at your state's civil code on tree ownership and write a certified letter telling him every little thing that you observe that's wrong with the uphill trees. If one falls, you've got a good record for negligence.
And good for you for taking up the chainsaw. That's dead sexy.
