For example, a neighbor’s tree limb breaks during an ice storm and lands on your property. Who’s responsible for the clean up? What if the neighbor’s broken tree limb damages your fence, house, or car by falling on it?
Is this an act of God and you clean up your own property? Or is there liability here?
Would the case be different if there was an obvious damaged limb in the tree that was ignored and eventually fell? Versus a healthy limb that snaps from an ice storm?
We had a major blizzard Christmas night and lots of broken tree limbs all over the state. I’m sure at least some of them involved trees on neighbor’s property falling on someone elses property.
When a branch from my tree hit my neighbor’s house, he was responsible for his cleanup (his insurance paid). I subsequently had the tree looked at by an arborist and he said it was diseased and should be cut down. I was told (and I can’t remember who told me), that if the tree were to fall (assuming I did not have it taken care of), I might be held responsible.
This answer might change by state or by insurance contract. My experience was in New Jersey. I also have no idea if I might have been held criminally responsible if the tree had injured/killed someone.
Not a lawyer or insurance company rep but there are 3 scenarios I can think of:
Tree and branches are entirely on your property and fall onto the neighbors property due to natural causes (storm, winds, etc). I would imagine you’d not be at fault since you couldn’t predict or control the tree falling and causing damage. It would be considered an “act of god”.
Tree is on your property but the roots/branches extend onto the neighbors property and cause damage. I think this would be your responsibility since you had a duty to prevent your tree from spreading onto the neighbors property. In some locations there may also be laws stipulating how close trees, sheds, fences, etc may be to the property line, and if your tree was in violation and then caused damage to your neighbors you might be responsible even though it was entirely on your property.
Tree was previously damaged/diseased, then falls onto the neighbors property and causes damage. If the tree was damaged or diseased, you had a responsibility to fix it and didn’t, and the tree subsequently fell and caused damage. That sounds like negligence to me and would be your fault.
The above is speculation on my part based on limited understanding of liability laws, common sense, and anecdotal evidence. Laws regarding liability of property damage vary from municipality to municipality and my opinion should not be taken as basis in fact. If you are in one of the above situations (either as tree owner or neighbor who suffered damage), I highly recommend that you seek legal counsel.
Thankfully, none of my tree limbs fell anywhere but my yard. My next door neighbor had a lot of limbs fall in the driveway and one big one hit his house. That was his giant pine tree. He had just moved his car because he heard the tree creaking & snapping.
Given the state wide scope of damage I wasn’t sure if all the damage was considered acts of god.
I had some large trees come down during a tornado. The ones that fell ON the house the insurance company paid for. The ones that did NOT fall on the house were 100% my responsibility.
My house had a huge pine tree at the end. Only 15 inches from the bedroom wall. Huge canopy that was at least 150 ft in diameter. It extended over much of my house and the neighbors. It scared me to death and I almost didn’t buy the house. The tree company had to rent a crane to take that sucker down safely. Some neighbors weren’t happy at losing the pretty tree but those huge limbs would have gone through a roof like paper mache.
I’m so glad now that tree was taken down 18 years ago. There’s no doubt in my mind some of those limbs would have come down in the Christmas day blizzard.
“Is this an act of God and you clean up your own property? Or is there liability here?”
It is an act of god unless it can be shown that you either did something that caused the incident or failed to do something a reasonable person would have done that would have prevented the incident. In other words, what did you do wrong that caused this? Answer; nothing.
Wait… Did you really cut down a healthy large tree with a 150 ft canopy just because it frightened you? (Sorry if that’s wrong, but it sounded that way from what you said, which obviously would be an absurd thing to do.) Or was it an unhealthy tree that was actually at immediate risk of falling over?
I am surrounded by 6 very tall loblolly pines that are all healthy and still shed large limbs occasionally. They are 6 - 20 feet from my house. So far none of the bigger ones have come down directly on my roof. If one tree blows over, my roof will be crushed. In high winds they sway like reeds. There several of the closest trees I would remove just as a precautionary measure if I had the spare cash to do so. I see healthy large pines blown over by winds all the time after storms.
Why you seem to think this would be irrational behavior is puzzling.
Once every decade or so we get an ice storm that rolls through Arkansas and does a number on our trees. When we got snowed on this past Christmas I spent the evening listening to the cracking of tree limbs as they buckled under the weight of the snow and crashed to the ground. A few good sized trees also went down that night. If I had a huge tree with multiple limbs hanging over my house like the sword of Damocles I’d be tempted to have it removed as well.
We had a thunderstorm come by here in Atlanta, and I had a couple of Bradford pears that were at least 50 ft tall start leaning towards my house. I didn’t sleep well until those suckers were gone. I’m still nervous about the 60 ft pines behind my house, but none of them are leaning the ‘wrong’ way.
Don’t get me wrong, I like trees, I’m even planting two pawpaws to replace the bradford pears. But I like my house way more than I like my trees, and it’s totally rational to want to protect your house, and more importantly, the family you have living in the house.
Good decision getting rid of those. Their wood is weak and their branch structure makes them easy to split. They are notoriously bad at coping with wind and storms.