Court Opinion

ID: 9697705
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:27:14.707347+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:34.709145
License: Public Domain

CAYTON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
Almost all property owners have had to contend with the usual and familiar type of inconvenience from blown or falling leaves. But the circumstances -of this case are far from usual.
As we can see from the photographs in the record, one of the trees on defendant’s property — the one causing the most damage — is quite large and very tall. Soil has been permitted to wash away from its roots, no support of any kind has been given the tree, and it now. leans at a sharp, precarious angle several feet across a public alley onto and over plaintiff’s property. Under these circumstances it seems highly -unrealistic to commend the injured property owner to the “self-help” remedy. I have no doubt that such is one of his remediés; but I do not agree that it is his only one. Shevlin v. Johnston, 56 Cal.App. 563, 205 P. 1087, and other cases in the majority opinion support this view. I do not agree that he must climb onto his roof and construct scaffolding (or engage others to do the dangerous work for him) and saw off the limbs of- defendant’s trees. I think he has the right to demand that defendant abate the nuisance or pay for the damage caused thereby, just as he would have the right to demand that an adjoining property owner remove an unsafe structure which constituted a threat of danger. “A property owner, it is said, has no more right to keep on his premises an unsound tree near the house of his .neighbor, on which it is liable to fall, than he would have to keep a dilapidated and unsafe building in the same position. It is his duty to maintain his premises in such a condition that they should not become a cause of injury to his neighbor’s property in a way that common prudence should foresee.” 1
I do not consider it of great importance whether this particular tree is “of natural growth” or otherwise; or whether it was “noxious” in character or not. The important fact is that the tree is in a state of bad neglect — defendant conceding that it has remained in its present condition for more than eight years.
Finally (speaking extrajudicially), I agree with my colleagues that problems like this can usually be solved without the aid of courts, and I think that reason and fairness should long ago have suggested to defendant that she remove the dangerous and offending tree.

. 1 Am.Jur., Adjoining Landowners, § 57.