Comment by estearum
4 days ago
A landowner is definitely not "technically responsible" for cleaning up trees that fall along or across the border of their property.
4 days ago
A landowner is definitely not "technically responsible" for cleaning up trees that fall along or across the border of their property.
If they are aware of a dangerous situation (diseased trees), and don’t do something about it, they are definitely on the hook for property damage caused by that negligence.
It would boil down to their degree of plausible deniability, ‘state priviledge’, and the specifics of the law and precedent in their state of course.
Good luck
The situation described says nothing about diseased trees. It says "I live next to a forest and trees fall."
I bet you the tree would show signs of disease if examined, unless this was during some exceptional event.
I maintain timberland, a percent of dead and diseased trees are normal. It is highly unlikely, at least in the species I’m familiar with, that a tree will just fall over.
Evolution tends to select against that kind of thing.
Notably, parks get sued pretty frequently when trees drop limbs on people or trees fall on folks stuff, under exactly this principle. It works too.
3 replies →