As regular visitors to the r/treelaw subreddit can attest, don't mess with trees that aren't yours.
This ridiculous story will enrage you, and then you'll gather some hope. It left the poster wondering what was going on, but commenters had plenty of advice.
An Arizonan with a big tree that stretched into a property next door said their neighbor asked them to cut it back, but they didn't have the money. Later, they got an estimate to have it trimmed "but still decided we weren't able to do it yet."
You know where this is going.
They woke up to the sound of a chainsaw but didn't think it was coming from their yard. Hours later, the neighbor handed the poster a bill. They stepped outside to see that the tree was all but gone. All that was left was roughly 10 feet of the tree trunk.
"Are they even legally allowed to do this?" the poster wrote. "… He didn't ask us or even let us know he was going to cut it yesterday, the guy doing the cutting didn't think to check if this was okay with us, AND they expect $550 to be paid by the end of the week? What can I do about this? This has to be some sort of destruction of property or something?"
The poster filed a police report, but law enforcement said they wouldn't help. The neighbor wouldn't answer phone calls.
"Get an attorney," one user wrote. "Your neighbor is NOT allowed to do this."
Another said: "What your neighbor did is going to cost them 5 or 6 figures in damages. You'd be walking away from a (likely) huge settlement if you let them get away with this.
"Listen to the advice that people are giving you here about talking to an arborist and a lawyer."
The loss of a tree is heartbreaking, especially since they help combat pollution and rising global temperatures brought on by our consumption of dirty sources of energy. Trees provide shade, of course, but they also filter air and water contaminants, regulate temperatures around houses, and add to property values.
Trees on your property will also give you a sense of calm, reducing stress and anxiety as well as offering a connection to nature. Native species will benefit the ecosystem in which they're planted and can help you lower your water bills and cut spending on maintenance products such as fertilizer.
The undoing of all that is distressing, and this poster said they were worried about legal fees. Others, however, offered hope.
"This seems pretty cut and dry, you are going to get paid. There's a decent chance a lawyer takes this on contingency," one person stated.
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