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Dale's Blog

Dealing with falling tree branches and insurance companies

Large tree branches can fall and cause damage at any time. Maybe it's a thunderstorm, an ice storm, or merely dead wood that pushes things over the edge - and onto your car. When it's a branch falling from a neighbor's tree, it can be frustrating when an insurance company refuses to pay up. Here's a column that I wrote for the Toledo Blade that explains your rights.

 A few factors come into play when analyzing these types of cases. One is whether we're talking about an urban or rural setting; another is whether the tree or branch fell near a public road or highway, and a third is whether the owner of the tree knew or should have known about the tree's defects.

In rural settings, courts have deemed it to be too much of a burden to require a property owner to inspect trees to determine if there might be a problem that could cause injury to a person or property. In theory, we could be talking about property owners who have forests on their land. Judges reason that requiring a rural landowner to correct problems with trees would be disproportionate to the risk of the harm actually occurring.

In urban settings, and I'd include suburbs in that definition, the equation changes when you're talking about the duty to inspect, especially near a public road or highway. The rationale is that it's generally not that great a burden for urban dwellers to pay attention to parcels of land that likely are a lot smaller than those found in rural areas. If the tree is near a public road or highway in an urban area, the risk of danger from a damaged or dying tree increases significantly because there's likely to be much more traffic.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the issue of whether the landowner had actual or constructive knowledge about a defect within a tree that could cause it or a limb to fall. Even in a rural area where there's no duty to inspect, a landowner who knew of a problem with a tree near a public highway and failed to correct it could be held responsible for damage caused by a falling tree or limb.