Via iStockphoto / @reshgala__ TikTok
A woman noticed that her neighbor cut down her tree when she wasn't home. Now her commenters are urging her to seek legal action. Here's why.
A woman came home to a surprise in her yard. That’s because a neighbor reportedly blindsided her by cutting one of her trees down while she was gone.
The content creator, who helps run a homesteading account @reshgala__, posted a video that received more than 884,000 views. In it, she tells her audience that the neighbor originally told her family they’d only cut a few branches.
The content creator says she wanted to be present during the work, but she approved some trimming. That, she says, was the extent of her approval. Unfortunately for her, the neighbor took much more than she asked for.
The Missing Tree
The content creator says she was out of the house when the chopping actually occurred. When she returned home, she noticed the tree was completely missing from her yard.
“So we just got home … Our neighbor chopped down [our tree] so that he could see the view of the Jordanelle,” the content creator says.
She mentions a prior discussion she had with said neighbor, where she says she told them she’d like to be home when they cut branches off of her tree. It’s unclear where a miscommunication happened or if it even did.
”We were away, and we came back. And our tree is gone,” she simply says.
The Update
In the same video, she gives her audience an update. There, she gives viewers more context about her post and her relationship with her neighbor.
“My intention was never for it to go viral,” she says. “My daughter actually informed me that I was public. It was meant only for my close friends to see.”
Then, she adds, “My neighbors have trees that are 30- to 40-feet tall or 50-feet tall, but I didn’t cut them down for those who called me petty.”
The content creator ends her video by saying the situation concluded on a positive note.
“I am fine. My neighbors are going to replace the tree. All is good,” she says.
‘Tree Law Is Real. Get A Lawyer’
Despite the content creator telling her audience the situation resolved on its own, viewers urged her to lawyer up.
“Going to cost him in the level of 50 k or more. Tree law is expensive,” one viewer said.
Another added, “[Call] an arborist, file a report, and sue. Also, you can sue the company that cut your tree, because you didn’t give them direct permission. They have insurance, so you don’t have to feel bad.”
What Is Tree Law?
As viewers said, tree law is indeed real and expensive. Many states have timber trespass statutes and allow plaintiffs to seek “treble damages,” which are a legal penalty that allows a court to multiply losses by three. In one such case in New York, a plaintiff received $145,047 after a perpetrator cut down a tree valued at $48,349. The resulting difference in sum came from trebling.
The rule also doesn’t just apply to trees that are fully cut down, at least in some states. In another example, a plaintiff received $37,000 for ordinary negligence after a defendant cut the roots of their tree, leading to its death. Interestingly, the plaintiff originally received $223,000 in damages. That total was reversed after a court of appeal ruled that the situation did not meet the legal definition of “timber trespass.”
California Real Estate Lawyers Blog, which wrote about the case, said the purpose of the state’s timber statutes is “to educate blunderers (persons who mistake location of boundary lines) and to discourage rogues (persons who ignore boundary lines), to protect timber from being cut by others than the owner.”
If @@reshgala__ wanted to pursue legal action, then there’s a good chance she’d be able to seek a hefty sum in damages. But it depends on her state’s tree laws, which can differ greatly.
BroBible reached out to @@reshgala__ via TikTok direct message for comment.