Tree Law is a Gnarly, Twisted Branch of the Legal System

May 25, 2016 8:37 AM

“I thought, as most lawyers do when they get their first tree case: ‘How hard can it be?’”

Seattle can be particularly emotional about trees; a recent tree cutting case has perpetrators facing possible felony charges and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, leading to perhaps the best lawyer apology letter I've ever read; they should have learned from the case of Judge Farris.

posted by bq (37 comments total)

Now if only the judges were Ents...
posted by clawsoon at 8:46 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

One of my best friends dropped out of law school very quickly back in the '90s, but the subject of the very first class he attended was a tree case (IIRC; who owns the fruit that falls from a tree that grows out of one yard but overhangs another).
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:48 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Was it The Case of the Thorns? Classic tort-class kickoff from 1466.

(And, yo, tree law is NUTSO, people kill neighbor's trees all the time in escalating petty disputes, and are shocked to discover they are facing big felonies and big lawsuits.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:51 AM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Tree law issues have plagued our legal system ever since Adam (and another) v God way back in 4004 BC. Been a while since I was in law school, but if I recall correctly that case turned on the scope of a profit-à-prendre granted by the second party to the first.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:10 AM on May 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

"It's never about the trees," Bonapart says. "The trees often serve as lightning rods for other issues that are the psychological underpinning of a dispute that people might have with each other."

This pretty much sums up my entire experience with my neighborhood's HOA.

If you ever find yourself beginning to marvel in the beautiful and compassionate generosity of humankind, just go to your next HOA meeting to obliterate that thought right out of your silly, silly head. Seriously.

Every HOA meeting I have been to in the last thirteen years of being a homeowner has been a three-ring circus shitshow of nosy-ass people with entirely too much time on their hands bringing forth the pettiest of petty grievances against other neighbors for obvious-to-everyone-else deep-seated, completely unrelated reasons.

It's fine entertainment for the money. And sometimes they even have free food.
posted by bologna on wry at 9:11 AM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]

Could someone explain the apology letter link to me? Why is it (I assume referring to the pdf linked in the linked article) the best letter ever?
posted by Wretch729 at 9:24 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

"It's never about the [X]," Bonapart says. "The [X] often serve as lightning rods for other issues that are the psychological underpinning of a dispute that people might have with each other."

This is the basis of so much private litigation, especially the stuff that ends up going to trial because the parties won't settle. And the bigger your ego, the more money you flush down the toilet (aka into your lawyers' pockets). It makes me wish filing a case came with some court-mandated therapy.
posted by sallybrown at 9:27 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Examples from Ask Mefi: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
posted by Mapes at 9:30 AM on May 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

Because it's full of grovels instead of ass-covering....
posted by bq at 9:40 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The trees often serve as lightning rods

I see what you did there
posted by Hoopo at 9:57 AM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

And then there's the tree that could retain its own attorney...
posted by Bromius at 10:03 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Seattle's got nothing on Toomer's Corner and an Alabama college football rivalry.

I grew up in Auburn and shed a tear for those trees, previously, previously.
posted by supercres at 10:20 AM on May 25, 2016

“It's never about the trees,” Bonapart says. “The trees often serve as lightning rods..."
I'm about to start a paralegal program, but LOLs forever.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:26 AM on May 25, 2016

I love this so much. Every tree over a certain size should have its own attorney, and every HOA anywhere should die in a fire.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 10:26 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

A tree falls in the wilderness. There are no attorneys around and no one was harmed. Who gets sued? (Answer: Gawker)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:36 AM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Lew Block, a consulting arborist and author of Tree Law Cases in the USA, once worked on a case in which both the defendant and plaintiff in the case were deceased, killed by the same falling tree.

How does this even work? Is the dead person really the plaintiff? Would it not be their estate? I mean, I can see a scenario where a dead person is the plaintiff for a case, but I would expect them to have been alive when the case started, or at least for the action that prompted the case.
posted by cardioid at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not quite getting the connection between HOAs and trees?

Wouldn't tree conservation be the one issue where the curmudgeonly attitude of a typical HOA would actually lead to a genuinely better outcome?

Fortunately, I live in a city (DC) that happens to have pretty good attitudes about this sort of thing. I haven't heard of any cases where the government went after people for cutting down a sick/unsafe tree (DC even keeps an inventory, and tracks trees that are nearing the end of their lifespan!), but have heard of a few cases where they righteously sued the living crap out of restaurant-owners who illegally cut down healthy street trees in front of their shops.
posted by schmod at 10:40 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

It makes me wish filing a case came with some court-mandated therapy.

Was coming to say something similar. So often in civil litigation the stuff that goes to trial is just dumb because the parties was something the courts can't actually grant. If you sue your neighbor because he won't pay for the repairs to your car after his tree fell on it, and what you really want is a check in the amount of the repairs, excellent, we can probably make that happen. If you sue your neighbor because he won't pay for the repairs to your car after his tree fell on it, and what you really want is for him to say that you are right, his house color/favorite sports team/way of raising children/political affiliation/method of grilling is bringing about the demise of civilization, well, that's not going be offered in settlement negotiations. And the jury can't make him think that. People have a lot of feelings about trees, and litigation doesn't really fix feelings the way some people think it will.
posted by Tentacle of Trust at 10:43 AM on May 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

I still think that I should be able to go after the owner of a tree for the leaves and branches that their tree drops onto my yard. Its not my tree, why should I have to be stuck with the cleanup? And don't even get me started with when we had an ice storm come through and I ended up with half a back yard full of downed branches that I had to clean up. That also required tools that I didn't own, so there was even real financial cost to that. And I live in an area where disposing of yard waste has costs, so even that part costs money.

On a related note, I absolutely hate willows. The leaves don't blow worth crap with a blower (they kinda lift up in teh air and fall back down where they started), and they drop ridiculous amounts of small branches every year over the winter.
posted by piper28 at 10:44 AM on May 25, 2016

Its not my tree, why should I have to be stuck with the cleanup?

"Because life's not fair." -my mom, 100x per day of my childhood. And because almost certainly if you take a case to court, the only people who profit or get much satisfaction from it are the lawyers. It's a chump's game!
posted by sallybrown at 11:04 AM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

So who does own the fruit that drops in the neighbor's yard? I'm assuming the neighbor, since if they have to clean up the branches and leaves and so on that they should also get the advantageous debris as well.
posted by tavella at 11:12 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, the tree owner would have to trespass to remove the fruit, so you would otherwise get a situation where the owner of the tree cannot pick up the fruit yet the owner of the property can not either, and it seems highly illogical to allow debris to build up.
posted by tavella at 11:13 AM on May 25, 2016

Apparently, that is indeed the case sometimes, tavella:

What if apples have fallen from your neighbor's tree onto the ground on your side of the property line? Wanting to pick them up and put them to use is perfectly understandable. But, in some states, the falls still belong to your neighbors. This is anomalous: On one hand, you can’t legally pick up and eat the fruit but, on the other hand, your neighbors can’t legally enter your land and retrieve it.

posted by Etrigan at 11:17 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Do you at least get some shade out of the deal, piper28? We get lots of leaves and branches too, but shade from the huge neighbor tree definitely keeps our a/c bills lower in the summer.

And if you can start a compost heap, leaves are great for that. We try not to use plant-waste pick up at all if we can help it, we compost, chip, burn in the fireplace or otherwise use up as much green stuff as possible. Might as well get use out of the mess.
posted by emjaybee at 11:17 AM on May 25, 2016

A tree falls in the wilderness. There are no attorneys around and no one was harmed. Who gets sued? (Answer: Gawker)

The tree had a sex tape?
posted by Talez at 11:27 AM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think that tree cutting case is a big deal because Seattle is "particularly emotional about trees" (as evidenced by a crazy guy climbing a tree, that's obviously reflective of city-wide attitudes!). It's a big deal because it's huge criminal damage to public land that will cause landslides and erosion, done because some selfish stupid pricks think they're above the law.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:31 PM on May 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

Please tell me that the word for tree lawyer is "Lorax."
posted by Dr and Mrs Eaves at 5:18 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

[filter: small town in MA on the CT border] I was intrigued about the idea that it's a tree owners responsibility to keep one's trees from becoming a hazard. That makes sense to me, and having made that assumption upon moving into our house, I pondered the cost of keeping our trees trimmed and not interfering in the road (we live on a corner and the part that abuts the road is basically a forest)...but then, the town comes through every year and trims our trees and sometimes just cuts one down. I would say "for us" but they do a strictly functional job of it and nothing that has forethought for the years to come or even some planning to make things look nice now. There's never any notice and it's not like they wait until something is critical and then come to do for us....they do the whole street at once, seemingly randomly....
posted by Tandem Affinity at 6:49 PM on May 25, 2016

piper28: "I still think that I should be able to go after the owner of a tree for the leaves and branches that their tree drops onto my yard. Its not my tree, why should I have to be stuck with the cleanup?"

I can't find it now but wasn't there post here about a study that correlated urban forests with positive health outcomes? The willow leaves you are picking up might be extending your life.
posted by Mitheral at 10:32 PM on May 25, 2016

Mitheral: I can't find it now but wasn't there post here about a study that correlated urban forests with positive health outcomes? The willow leaves you are picking up might be extending your life.

I remember someone saying - maybe here on Metafilter? - that the first thing their working-class family did when moving into a new house was cut all the trees down. The cost/risk of having a tree fall on the house (or the car, or whatever) was something the family simply couldn't afford. So that makes me wonder if the health effects are actually partly (or mostly?) socioeconomic. It's expensive to move to a lovely tree-lined neighbourhood; it takes money to not worry about an old tree falling on your house; we know that money makes you healthier.
posted by clawsoon at 8:24 AM on May 26, 2016

The study was based on the the Ontario Health Study. Since it's an actual study and since people who do actual research have heard of spuriousness, it controls for income, age, education, and surely other things.

Also, since the data are from Toronto, working-class-people-cut-down-trees us unlikely to be a thing: First, you can't cut down a tree, even in your own yard, without a permit from the city's tree advocate. When you see home renovations around here they have a temporary fence around any trees labelled "tree protection zone" and a sign listing things you're not allowed to do in the TPZ because they might harm the tree. The city's protectiveness of trees is one reason they were able to do the study: They city has a list of all the trees that they were able to get for their data.

Second, remember that there's a lot less litigiousness in Canada. In part this is because there's not much point to suing over injuries. In the US people sue over injuries because they have health care expenses and because their insurance companies basically require them to try to get the money somewhere else first. In Canada there will be no charge for the treatment.

Obviously things like damage to homes is another story, but remember that cutting down a tree costs a few hundred dollars at least, and it costs it FOR SURE, right now. Whereas, my neighbour sued me because my tree branch broke their window might cost a couple of thousand dollars, but it's A) Unlikely and B) Down the road. If you're inclined to gamble, leaving the tree alone is a winning bet and a whole lot less trouble.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:36 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't believe claw soon was implying that the anecdote about tree cutting was based on the same study.

Also, in the US, more rural areas are unlikely to have tree protection laws, and the cost of cutting down a tree if you are on, say, a farm, is the cost of the saw minus the value of the firewood.
posted by bq at 9:08 AM on May 26, 2016

Right, my point was that clawsoon was suggesting that the health effect might be spurious on the tree cutting thing/the likelihood that people with more money live near more trees. I was pointing out that A) That source of spuriousness was controlled for and B) It wasn't likely to be a thing in Toronto, where the data were collected (so it's the Toronto tree laws that are relevant to the study data) anyway, which makes it even less likely that this is a source of spuriousness.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:13 AM on May 26, 2016

I don't think clawsoon was suggesting that.
posted by bq at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2016

Those are good points, If only I had a penguin.... (Notice the four dots. Last one is a period to end the sentence.) However... I'm skimming the study now, and it looks like it's cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. As a resident of Toronto who has lived in a handful of Toronto neighbourhoods, I'm hesitant to accept the conclusions at face value. First, Toronto has a lot of moving. A lot of people moving in from all over the world and from across Canada, whose health will mostly be determined by their pre-Toronto lives. A lot of moving within Toronto.

And the moving within Toronto... I know that when I've felt good, when I've felt like I'm in a solid place with no health or mental health or job issues on the horizon, I'm more likely to move to a nice Toronto neighbourhood. All those neighbourhoods have lots of trees.* When I'm worried about my health and mental health and job, I'm more likely to move to a cheaper neighbourhood. They always have less trees, or no trees.

So that's not a refutation by any means; it may well be that trees make people healthier. But... but... it does seem to be pushed a little bit by the old "if only poor people lived like us they'd be healthy!" idea that tries to find all the possible ways to make poor people healthier except giving them money. (Just plant more trees! Easy!) I'm not saying anyone in this thread is doing that. It's just something that I'm sensitive to, and living in Toronto, with all its healthy-upper-middle-class-see-you-at-the-organic-farmer's-market signalling, has made me much more aware of it.

* Those neighbourhoods also always seem to have a lot of high-priced coffee shops. As a control, it would be interesting to do exactly the same study but with coffee shops instead of trees.
posted by clawsoon at 9:47 AM on May 26, 2016

BTW, I like trees. My parents planted trees all around our backyard, and I loved the sense of being inside a canopy. I'm all for the planting of more trees, for my own selfish aesthetic reasons. (Sorry, allergy sufferers!) I believe that they're magical... just maybe not that magical.
posted by clawsoon at 9:58 AM on May 26, 2016

Coffee shops would be interesting, I had been thinking I was surprised they didn't also control for neighbourhood income levels: Neighbourhood effects around income are well-known -- regardless of how poor or rich you are yourself, people who live in neighbourhoods with higher average income have better outcomes than people who live in neighbourhoods with lower average incomes. The findings on whether those findings are causal are also mixed.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:58 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]