One homeowner found out the hard way who pays if a neighbor’s tree hits your roof. I’m Amy E. Feldman.
A man in Bellevue, Washington tried to barter for tree removal services by offering that anyone willing to remove his 140 foot Douglas Fir tree could keep the wood for free. He got a taker—a guy showed up alone to cut down the tree despite windy conditions and yada yada—right into a neighbor’s roof. So, who pays if your neighbor’s tree comes down on your house?
Well, generally, if your house is damaged, it is YOUR homeowner’s insurance that pays even if the tree was owned by your neighbor, so long as the damage was caused by a storm or other unforeseeable event. Where it’s totally foreseeable that, if the neighbor hires some yokel without checking his credentials or his insurance (which said yokel did not have) then the homeowner could sue his neighbor for negligence. Too bad for all of them, turned out to be the neighbor who is keeping the wood.
Leave a Reply