One homeowner's landscaping investment was wasted when their unscrupulous neighbor apparently destroyed their newly planted trees.
The homeowner posted about the problem in r/treelaw. "Neighbour vandalised my tree," they said. "Came home to this. Someone has come on to our property and butchered our trees. They were not overhanging. Such a shame! Where do I begin?"
They included photos of the wreckage: one young tree with all the ends of its branches and almost all its leaves removed, with only a bit of the mess on the ground. Other trees nearby didn't show such obvious signs of damage, though judging from the original poster's words, they might have been more lush before the mystery visitor arrived.
They blamed a neighbor, and it's easy to see why. The tree is near a fence, and it's unfortunately common for neighbors to stand in the way of eco-friendly home improvements such as adding a tree. A mature tree would have shaded the property and added value as well as filtered the air and prevented erosion, but now this tree will likely never do that.
This is not one of the cases wherein r/treelaw was able to promise the homeowner a satisfying legal outcome.
"The frustrating part is that if your neighbour hasn't said anything, and you have no camera footage — even though he knows he did it, you know he did it, and even I know he did it — there's no proof it wasn't a completely random trespasser," one commenter said.
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"I don't think it matters where you are really," another wrote. "Even if you were in a treble damages state this is probably not worth litigating. A couple hundred bucks likely gets you a comparable replacement and double that for installed with the old removed… I'd say it might be worth a certified letter on a law firm letterhead stating the amount they should pay you."
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