tl;dr: Wealthy neighbor ignored warnings about a massive 200-year-old "hazard" tree and lied about due diligence. It fell, crushing my rental property -- my tenant would've died if she were at home. Aloof neighbor fails to understand the concept of insurance in a rather comprehensive way.
In 2019, I asked my neighbor who bought the house next door about the health of the massive 200-year-old pecan tree towering over our block. He told me he had "multiple arborists" check it out, and I took him at his word.
In 2023, the tree fell, sending about 40 tons of lumber onto my property. It split exactly where predicted [see photo 2]. It would have killed my tenant if she had been in her bedroom. A few months later, I learned from *another* neighbor that the tree had been arborist-designated a "hazard" well before the neighbor (who I'll call "Michael," since I didn't have to sign an NDA) bought the house. He learned of its "hazard" status, and he misrepresented his due diligence to me.
Due to the age of our house, we had an insurer of last resort, so our insurance cut us short. I spend over 400 hours doing demo and the rebuild myself, digging my tenant's jewelry out of the rubble with bandaged hands after dozens of hours looking for particularly sentimental family heirlooms. [see photo 3]
Meanwhile, Michael and his wife (who had a 20-year age gap but no full-time jobs) were engaged in a continuous home renovation (since 2018). While I was sweating and bleeding and dealing with tons of debris, Michael converted a van for "van life" -- in a display of finances and leisure time that I didn't have...
In the immediate aftermath, Michael gave me 3-4 hours of labor. During that time, he also helped himself to spare lumber and building materials I had stored in my shed -- a shed that his tree had obliterated. Because I didn't yet know about his negligence, I even helped him carry some of the lumber to his yard.
He even asked if he could salvage some of the pecan tree trunk. I consented, again not yet knowing about the extent of his negligence and deception. He quickly discovered the wood was entirely too decayed to be salvaged... which shouldn't have surprised him since he knew of the tree's "hazardous" condition and state of decay.
It took months to prove this wasn't an "act of God" but one of gross negligence. Michael's insurer, State Farm, ignored me for 10 consecutive months. In one blatant delay tactic, State Farm emailed me claiming they couldn't open JPG files, and they asked me to physically mail in a flash drive instead. [see photo 4].
It required an unusual amount of resourcefulness and 150 hours of claims documentation, prepared as if I were headed to jury trial, but I eventually tracked down the supervisor of the woman ignoring me at State Farm.
A year after the tree fell, Michael texted me to ask for a meeting to "apologize." I lawfully recorded all 30 minutes of that conversation, which lacked the structure, phrasing, or sincerity of an "apology."
Michael admitted he "should've had the tree cut," but then attacked my character because he thought I "wasn't nice" to him when I finally learned of and confronted him about his deception. He and his wife actually tried to maintain that their insurance "wasn't a remedy," thinking that they get to unilaterally decide what insurance does and doesn't cover.
He even tried to stack his 3-4 hours of "help" against my hundreds of hours of labor, whining that he "broke a tool" while helping me -- a ridiculous thing to say to someone tens of thousands of dollars in the hole. When I asked him to proide the receipts from the "multiple arborists" he claimed investigated the tree, he agreed in the recording, but completely stonewalled me during the settlement process.
State Farm ultimately settled for $60,000 and I hope my insurer subrogated what they had already paid me on top of that. They also settled with my tenants and other neighbor. It compensated me for every scrap of time I had to expend due to his negligence (including claims time), but not at a rate I would've accepted in the August heat.
Michael hasn't spoken to me in the two years since his recorded non-apology. So, to observe the anniversary, I sent him a 3,000-word email quoting his own "apology" back to him, as closure and a final word I'd been denied. I even kindly asked him to rebuild his fence (the ony damage he sustained) as tall and opaque as code allows. He hasn't responded.
He pulled some classic DARVO tactics on me during his apology, but I made him repeat this phrase: "you are not the victim here" just because I used some bad words.
Don't trust aloof artist types at their own word for things, especially those who have been shrouded in privilege their whole lives.
r/treelaw has been popping up on my feed for years during this saga, and I'm glad I can finally share my story. Someone could've died from his negligence, and I'm eternally grateful that the only thing to die was my relationship with my neighbor.
As I signed in my email to him, Millie Jackson simply says it better than I do.
Last time I was inside his house, he told me he “keeps his blinds closed so insurance and code enforcement don’t know what I’m doing in here.” I really need to weaponize that and will take ideas from my treelaw friends!
