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December 16, 2020

Russell v. Man (Nov. 17, 2020, E072266) __ Cal.App.5th __ [2020 WL 7318952]

As beautiful as trees are, they often result in major legal battles.

An 85-foot Jeffery pine straddled the property line between defendants’ vacant lot and plaintiffs’ property. During construction on the lot, defendants’ workers crossed onto plaintiffs’ property to cut dead branches from the tree, and also cut some of the tree roots while working on defendants’ property.

The tree died and plaintiffs sued for wrongful cutting of trees (Civ. Code, § 3346[1]), negligence, and trespass. The court awarded plaintiffs $73, 265.50 for the value of the tree, and then trebled that amount under section 3346. Defendants appealed.

The Court of Appeal reversed. The court held defendants could not be liable under section 3346 because the statute requires an intentional trespass for the purpose of injuring a tree. Here, plaintiffs’ alleged two trespasses but the Court of Appeal found neither was sufficient to invoke section 3346. First the trespass committed by defendants’ workers when they entered plaintiffs’ land to cut the branches did not cause the tree to die. Second, the court speculated that cutting the tree’s roots on defendants’ property could be considered a “common law trespass” because the tree is real property owned by both parties, but held that such a trespass lacked the crossing of a boundary line required for section 3346 liability. Accordingly, plaintiffs were only entitled to the value of the tree, rather than treble the value under section 3346. The court also reduced the damages award for the value of the tree to $37,000.

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[1] “For wrongful injuries to . . . trees . . . upon the land of another, or removal thereof, the measure of damages is three times such sum as would compensate for the actual detriment”