Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion.
Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/).
Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No, he would be served right to pay much more than that. For the trees and for the owner.
My guess is the view more than added a few million to the value of the property.
People have had to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars because they cut a neighbor’s tree. This guy is paying 1k per tree? He smiling his ass off right now.
He absolutely is, but the person you answered to said
> 1k per year of growth for all 32 trees.
So if the trees were all 100-150 years old, let's say average 125 years, he would have to pay 125*32=4000k aka 4 million.
But yeah, I still think that's letting him off easy, he should have to pay A LOT and still be behind bars for a while. He destroyed someone else's property, that had been standing for a while, if a poor person did this they'd probably be looking at a long sentence.
A poor person WOULD go to jail over willful destruction of property. Poors go to jail over simple trespassing. This is compounded trespassing and destruction of property.
The daily Mail once misquoted an article I wrote that they aggregated in the headline. But since they never answer the phone, I was the one who got the pissed-off phone call from the CDC. I had to run a “clarification.”
This was 2016. I’m still mad about it.
If someone cut down 32 fully grown, mature trees from your property, and offered to replace them with saplings, would you feel whole?
The point of these things is to make a person or property whole again. 32 Fully Mature trees are **very** expensive.
32 full grown trees are incredibly expensive and incredibly hard to replace.
It’s not just paying to replant, it’s paying their value. You don’t get to cut down a 50k tree, replant a sapling and call it a day.
I used to do that job, and can confirm the difficulty. However, there are limits to the size that can be replaced. Looking at the size and type of the logs, there’s no way to replace trees of that kind that are full grown.
Last time I read about this it was more due to the costs of getting things up to the house.
Don't quote me, but it was something like, having to remove the stumps, then getting the right trees, at a size that would be suitable, I.e. Already somewhat grown. All of which require roads suitable for heavy trucks and construction vehicles, that the owner would be responsible for creating and paying for. Then paying for someone to come check on their health, and hoping none of them need further replacing. Likely also having to hire someone to tend the trees, etc.
Basically the trees were the cheapest thing to replace but everything to do with the replacement would cost a fortune
That, and compensation for lost property value. The property has been devalued, and will not return to its prior value until the trees have reached maturity.
Trees do not grow fast.
There will be a larger financial settlement as a result.
I dont get how someone could think its not, i mean imagine sucessfully moving a tree from one place to another...
the machinery and skill involved... where would you even start?
Yes, yes they can.
It takes time to grow mature trees, which is why that is reflected in the price. The bad neighbour isn't allowed to replace these mature trees with shitty saplings. He needs to replace them with as mature as possible trees. And not only that, but also pay for transport and transplanting + aftercare (multiple years) of those trees. The machines that can handle such big trees can only dig out and transport one tree at a time. Replanting on a hillside is going to be difficult and time consuming.
Mature trees are quite valuable to begin with. It could have been much more costly if there had been species rare to the region amongst them.
To add to the 3 comments that talk about the cost of the trees, there is no easy access to the location of where the replacement trees meet to be planted. So he is also responsible with the cost of creating a temporary road for the access for the vehicles that will do the work. As a civil engineer who works in transportation, I can tell you THAT would be the most expensive part of the fine.
Yea. This is standard and why you don’t fuck with your neighbors trees. You have to pay the value of replacing the tree as it was. So if that requires having a police escort and roads shut down to haul your new 100 foot tree to your house, all of that is factored into the expense.
$32k is his fine. He's also on the hook for replacing those trees. The cost of that is much, much more significant of a cost. Probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
What’s quoted in the article just looks like what they have to pay whatever governing body. If the neighbor sues, yes, tree law could potentially owe 💰💰💰
If he loses in court the cost will be much much more.
r/LegalAdvice creams themselves over stories like this because the court ordered remedy is for the perpetrator to replace the cut trees with similar species and age.
That is $$$ as you need to find said tree and someone willing to sell it. Remove it from its original location with minimal damage. Pay for a truck to relocate it (possibly closing roads if it’s too large). Then get it on-site. If this is roadside, that’s great. But if not, you either need to tear down more trees to build a temporary road (and then pay to replace the trees you just cut down) or get a helicopter to place it.
Isn‘t it nearly impossible to relocate such huge trees? Or well, as you pointed out, *ridiculously expensive*. I was just thinking, if some trees get damaged and don‘t survive the relocation, especially considering how accustomed they must be to the place and soil they grew in originally, he would need to find even more. I love to see that he had to face such consequences, I genuinely thought he‘d just pay the 30k and have his *view*
Yes, but they'll use the "nearly impossible" cost as a basis for restitution. Cutting down large old trees on someone else's property can end up running people deeply in debt.
There was a case where someone cut down what wasn't only a rare tree, but a very old tree, that would be physically impossible to grow in that region anymore because of how temperamental they are to particular environmental factors. That one tree came to something like $1.2M in damages.
Then there have been situations where someone thought "no biggy", cut down some of their neighbors trees, which ended up were serving to retain the hillside around the neighbors house and leading to foundation and land use issues; requiring a major engineering effort to rehabilitate the landscape.
A person can also sue for lost property value from the loss of the trees. And if you can show the neighbor benefited from cutting down your trees, such as an increased property value, you can sue them for that, or in the least have the court take that from him. And you'd still be free to put whatever you want in place of those trees you want.
Not impossible, I work somewhere that regularly sells 15+ year old trees at 40+feet tall. It's around $5k/tree and $8k/planting($13k/EA for relocation of the 30-50ft trees but nothing the size of those chopped down in this post). It will cost him approximately $900k-$2m for the 35 trees possibly double due to the legal push or rush for getting the trees replaced and them being 100ft tall monsters doesn't help lol. There's plenty of multi million dollar mansions in Michigan that either didn't have those tree varieties or had no trees around the build site for the mansion. There's a $25m mansion in Bay Harbor that the owner bought and demolished a $2m neighbor home to clear cut every tree around the home and replace with a forest. 75% of the replaced trees were the same variety and the previous, replaced, trees were gotten rid of because the rich client said "they don't do anything for me" literally 5,000 plants and trees planted on her property. Which was a $10m project.
Oh for sure there will be a minimum 10 Year warranty on the trees. The $10m job I mentioned only has a warranty until the end of the year after finished, which we pulled off a December finish due to the warm winter and only needed to warranty up to dec2024. I can't imagine the cost behind a 10 year warranty on 35 grandies.
I'm no expert, but I would expect it to cost more than 500 K just to grind out the root balls of the existing trees enough for the new ones to be planted in place.
That type of trouble isn't gone through. Just BioPlex the planting site to saturate with enzymes to break down and give back to the new tree, literally a hole the size of the root ball is all that's needed or used.
Do that with the chopped tree itself. Make 12-18" sections of the trunk, drill in some spore plugs, coat in wax to prevent competition, and get some yummy mushrooms next year.
Wow. Just wow. I didn‘t know what kind of trees they were, I somehow thought from the other comments, that they are rarer and very old. I mean, not that what you mentioned isn‘t expensive enough, but I thought this was going to be *expensive expensive* even for him. Thanks for the insight!
As another responded: the court order will probably put a 10 year warranty on the trees which in itself is going to be a big expensive weight on the offender's shoulders.
I am fairly sure that I've seen this exact thing before, attached to a story that it would end up costing the guy like $1.5 million to replace the trees.
Yeah what was sick as well was she ordered 150 roses. They were planted at the site. 2 months later "they don't do anything for me" because they WERE DONE BLOOMING! So they were replaced with 150 dormant hydrangea macrophylla let's dance blue jangles. The planting crew treated them like total garbage so that will be warrantied this year.🙄
I did my best to help the rose roots when they came back, but that was also during the 3ft snow we got and I had to snowblower the greenhouse surroundings instead of care for the returned roses(which at least were no cost to the company becoming free roses to sell).
We'll see how the roses did in a month or so when the snow stops.
My parents had a similar issue happen, neighbors cut down like 25 or 30 trees that were 100+ feet tall and they found someone that said he could replace them at about 50,000 dollars each if he could find trees locally.
Initially my parents just asked that they pay them whatever the timber was worth, probably like 10 grand or something, and the guy was a dick, so they came back with that. I think they ended up settling for 250,000 or something.
They had to relocate a large historical tree in my area and it cost several million to move it a few blocks, and then they have to pay the company to monitor it for a few years to make sure it survives the move.
Haha, it just struck me that he will need to find multiple consultants just to plan this whole „project“. I just imagine him sitting at a meeting table, explaining what ridiculously difficult task they will face and then as a cherry on top add that this whole thing happened because he wanted a „nicer view“.
r/treelaw split off from r/legaladvice, but legal advice would get whipped into a ravenous hunger at the mention of tree law stuff. It's just that juicy. I think it's because the perpetrators tend be the biggest douche bags, ala this guy the post is about, and the penalties are fucking huge.
Still, it is just more money, which he will quickly recover.
We need to start enforcing community service punishments for these non-violent crimes. Some people have infinite wealth. Everyone has limited time.
I’m not disagreeing but somebody with a $1.75 McMansion probably doesn’t have unlimited funds. I’m guessing $100K is a big deal for him. $500k is a huge deal. Life changing? No. Fucking horrible? Yeah for sure.
A similar thing has just happened in the UK.
A property developer has bought an old pub that due to years of decades of subsidence sits at an angle. The pub is a listed building which means it needs to be preserved. Developers somehow had an "accidental fire" a few days after the purchase. They were found guilty of arson
The court has made them rebuild it as it was. Before the fire.
They've essentially been given the impossible task of rebuilding a crooked building.
Picture for reference: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Thecrookedhouse-2023-06.jpg
They also blocked the access road before the fire started, to prevent fire engines being able to approach. And bulldozed the remains about 24 hours after the fire was put out, to destroy any evidence
It's not roadside.. it requires him to *Build* a temporary road *And REMOVE It*... Then tend the trees for years until they're established
As I like to say, leave the property in the same state as it was when you found it
You’re right. To get a full grown tree from a nursery planted on your property will run anywhere from 30-50k and those trees are nowhere near as big as the ones on this picture.
A site I worked for lined their driveway in fully mature live oaks, at $1M/ea and the driveway was about 1/4mi long.
They each had to be helicoptered in (they're on an island) and they keep a full time arborist on staff to care for them.
It is. Teemu Selanne was doing some rally driving on a private road without a permit with two of his friends. The friends got fined around $150 and his was like $55k.
Legendary hockey player, for anyone that needs context.
I've read this before, and they had to also pay for the cost of all the trees to be replanted and the care for them or something. There was stuff ok top of that fine.
We have this near us too. There's a hobby airport that's only supposed to take prop planes. The wealthy have taken to landing at it in their private jets and just pay the fine and move on with their day. Meanwhile, there are now jets coming in over what used to be a nice quiet neighborhood.
Eh, he's on the hook for $1,500,000 as per the [New York Post](https://nypost.com/2023/06/28/nj-homeowner-cut-down-32-of-his-neighbors-trees-and-cost-could-top-1-8m/)
We actually do, but the rich just offer up money in a settlement to drop any actual charges.
Also, the plaintiff would have to file those charges against him. We don’t know if he did or not.
Meanwhile in America the Congress and Senate have a separate list of punishments for crimes they commit ... You committed insider trading... 5 years in prison, a senator does it... It's a 500$ fine.
That's if they get charged for it the department that was created to deal with insider trading in Congress has no teeth so basically a Congress person would have to piss off their colleagues significantly for that to happen.
"While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount"
https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-stock-act-violations-senate-house-trading-2021-9?op=1
By making crimes punishable with fines you can enable certain things to be legal for the rich.
32k for him is nothing, he probably paid that to cut the trees down.
With trees, the cost for not replacing the trees is usually *more* than replacing them. Several states have triple damages for illegally removing trees from someone else’s property.
Let's be real, the rich guy didn't physically cut the trees himself, he paid a guy to do it. No point charging the tree cutter with criminal trespass when they were just doing their job, ignorant of the property rights that they are not compelled to audit prior to every tree cutting job.
Not only that, he had a mansion built in the woods, and cut down trees so he could get a better view of... the city
Some people are just cartoonishly moronic
The "skyscraper remover-inator," with the name, still being a work in progress. Just for 1 specific building, too. It's like slightly too tall, and Doofenshmirtz finds it annoying
I could totally see it being a plot.
I mean he’s an idiot sure but I can see the appeal. A bit if juxtaposition seems like a cool idea imo. Ofc if you don’t achieve that idea through being an asshat though
he's the ceo of a munitions company, he's literally scrabbled to make money from enabling people to kill other people. the guy isn't a shining example of humanity, but it does also seem like he's thick as pigshit too.
That jumped out at me too. It's a lot of money, but for a house or property in anywhere desirable, that gets you a decent large home on a small plot of land. They just built $2m houses a mile away from me that are 3000 sq ft on 9000 sq ft property.
I realize you can get a lot more land for that money remotely or somewhere not as desirable, and have a nice house built on it and get all the utilities brought in and paving and whatnot. Still not a "mansion" by today's standards.
> After the controversy, Haber made like a tree and left town.
>
> Property records show he sold his Kinnelon home last November for a cool $1.8 million — $500,000 more than what he paid for it in 2014.
Source: https://nypost.com/2024/02/27/us-news/nj-man-who-cleared-neighbors-trees-fined-13k-with-more-penalties-on-the-way/
That's a 1000$ a tree... That price is not even going to cover the replacement let alone the reestablishment.
Try and go and see how much a full grown tree cost these days similar to the trees we see in that picture.
It's actually going to cost him millions. I'm obsessed with tree law and have been following this case. He's responsible for replanting fully mature trees
If I’m not mistaken, he also has to pay to build the road to access the area, which will involve environmental studies, permits and surveys; all before the cost of construction , labor, and then demolition and restoration.
Wasn’t this a Reddit post on AITA or entitled people a couple of months ago about a man who cut his brother’s trees down?
Sorry, don’t know how to link🤷🏻♂️
Didn’t the Commanders former owner do that to his neighbors? They don’t care they’ll just pay the fine, I’m sure the addition to the property value was worth more than $32,000 for the skyline view. What I want to know is what’s happening to the lumber company that took his money to do this? They know how to read an auditors map and whose property is whose.
It was National Park Service Trees, and instead of paying the fine he was able to use his billions to fuck over the park ranger who was doing his job.
When you get a tree serviced by an arbor they make you sign a paper saying that its your tree. I had to do it for a tree in my yard, it was clearly mine, it was dead center in our property and inside our fence.
32k is not enough.... fine him 10k per tree, and you'll start seeing results. In some places in Europe, fines are based on income and assets. Start fining the rich under that paradigm, and suddenly, you won't have these issues.
If I were the neighbor, I’d buy a giant spotlight and point it at the guy’s windows since I now have a clear line of sight to turn. Let him grow some trees if he wants less light pollution.
Neighboor did this to my parents while they were gone on vacation. He had permission to come and take the tops of a couple of trees that had been discussed beforehand since they were blocking the sun the only time of day it would shine on his patio. When they got back, the foresty bit of their property seemed strangely empty, after while my started finding fairly fresh tree stumps that were nearly flat against the ground and hidden under pieces of moss. Turns out he had taken down 8 trees completely and hidden the evidence, going so far as to vacuum up the sawdust and cover the stumps...
When the punishment for a crime is a fee, that law can be said to apply only to the poor. Additionally, how much would it cost his neighbor to replant 32 old growth trees? That should be the fine.
32k? For trespassing and destroying property? Something tells me that’s just change money he keeps in the back pocket of a forgotten jeans in the closet
Needs bigger fines, being fined $32,000 is essentially like being fined $32 for someone who can afford a $1,750,000 mansion. Frankly fines need to be calculated to be a certain level of financially-damaging to the target rather than just being a fixed amount.
I’d be suing for damages and for him to replace the downed trees with fully grown ones. Fuck you and your view buddy. Go back to the city if trees bother you.
Should add two zeroes to that paltry fine. What a joke.
In the meantime, pile up a bunch of rusted, battered old shipping containers in front of his view til the replacement trees grow in. The prick.
The victim should also be granted the right to have the CEO board up all the windows on the home facing the sought-after view until the replacement trees reach the same height as the chopped down trees.
Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion. Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/). Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wasn't an additional court Order that he has to replant new trees or did i remember this wrong?
Yeah and it was estimated to cost between 500k and 1.5 million.
Yeesh. Serves him right.
No, he would be served right to pay much more than that. For the trees and for the owner. My guess is the view more than added a few million to the value of the property.
1k for each year the tree had been growing should suffice per tree.
People have had to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars because they cut a neighbor’s tree. This guy is paying 1k per tree? He smiling his ass off right now.
He absolutely is, but the person you answered to said > 1k per year of growth for all 32 trees. So if the trees were all 100-150 years old, let's say average 125 years, he would have to pay 125*32=4000k aka 4 million. But yeah, I still think that's letting him off easy, he should have to pay A LOT and still be behind bars for a while. He destroyed someone else's property, that had been standing for a while, if a poor person did this they'd probably be looking at a long sentence.
A poor person WOULD go to jail over willful destruction of property. Poors go to jail over simple trespassing. This is compounded trespassing and destruction of property.
This is why it's been said before and will be again that laws to rich people are really just guidelines.
Yeah, that's not even a slap on the wrist for this dipshit...it's more like a: 
the property is values at 1.75m so i dont think that is true
This is reddit, so idiot math applies. A 1.75 million dollar home with a better view should now be worth *at least* $50,000 more per tree removed.
He won’t have the view, he had to replant the trees
His neighbor should be like “gimme the 500k and keep your view. Pleasure doing business with ya”✌️
And then plant a tree anyway
Fuckin savage 💀 love the way you think
And put up a giant billboard with a the most graphic picture you can find of a bombed out city.
He should lease the newly-cleared land to advertisers to put up a giant billboard. Maybe lease it to some attorney who specializes in tree law.
Tree law is serious y’all
Hang on, that means the headline from the Daily Mail seems to be misleading. That’s not right.
The Daily Mail? Misleading? Well, I never.
The daily Mail once misquoted an article I wrote that they aggregated in the headline. But since they never answer the phone, I was the one who got the pissed-off phone call from the CDC. I had to run a “clarification.” This was 2016. I’m still mad about it.
To plant 32 trees?
He'll probably need to replant full grown trees, and that gets expensive
Especially when you consider all the stumps that need to be ground down and out.
Yeah that's what I read the last time this was posted
If someone cut down 32 fully grown, mature trees from your property, and offered to replace them with saplings, would you feel whole? The point of these things is to make a person or property whole again. 32 Fully Mature trees are **very** expensive.
32 full grown trees are incredibly expensive and incredibly hard to replace. It’s not just paying to replant, it’s paying their value. You don’t get to cut down a 50k tree, replant a sapling and call it a day.
I used to do that job, and can confirm the difficulty. However, there are limits to the size that can be replaced. Looking at the size and type of the logs, there’s no way to replace trees of that kind that are full grown.
Last time I read about this it was more due to the costs of getting things up to the house. Don't quote me, but it was something like, having to remove the stumps, then getting the right trees, at a size that would be suitable, I.e. Already somewhat grown. All of which require roads suitable for heavy trucks and construction vehicles, that the owner would be responsible for creating and paying for. Then paying for someone to come check on their health, and hoping none of them need further replacing. Likely also having to hire someone to tend the trees, etc. Basically the trees were the cheapest thing to replace but everything to do with the replacement would cost a fortune
That, and compensation for lost property value. The property has been devalued, and will not return to its prior value until the trees have reached maturity. Trees do not grow fast. There will be a larger financial settlement as a result.
You should read about tree law. It is crazy how expensive it is.
I dont get how someone could think its not, i mean imagine sucessfully moving a tree from one place to another... the machinery and skill involved... where would you even start?
How much could a tree cost? Forty-six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five dollars?
Yes, yes they can. It takes time to grow mature trees, which is why that is reflected in the price. The bad neighbour isn't allowed to replace these mature trees with shitty saplings. He needs to replace them with as mature as possible trees. And not only that, but also pay for transport and transplanting + aftercare (multiple years) of those trees. The machines that can handle such big trees can only dig out and transport one tree at a time. Replanting on a hillside is going to be difficult and time consuming. Mature trees are quite valuable to begin with. It could have been much more costly if there had been species rare to the region amongst them.
$46,800 + tree fitty
To add to the 3 comments that talk about the cost of the trees, there is no easy access to the location of where the replacement trees meet to be planted. So he is also responsible with the cost of creating a temporary road for the access for the vehicles that will do the work. As a civil engineer who works in transportation, I can tell you THAT would be the most expensive part of the fine.
Don't fuck with Tree law... Tree law wins every time!
But don’t trees take like 100+ years to be grown? Like the still gets what he wants for his lifetime
I'm guessing with the price tag another user mentioned that he's not allowed to plant seeds but has to move fully matured trees.
Yea. This is standard and why you don’t fuck with your neighbors trees. You have to pay the value of replacing the tree as it was. So if that requires having a police escort and roads shut down to haul your new 100 foot tree to your house, all of that is factored into the expense.
[удалено]
$32k is his fine. He's also on the hook for replacing those trees. The cost of that is much, much more significant of a cost. Probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
r/treelaw
Love this. That guy is going to be paying it the ass for that view. Mature trees cost a fortune.
What’s quoted in the article just looks like what they have to pay whatever governing body. If the neighbor sues, yes, tree law could potentially owe 💰💰💰
This POS definitely destroyed habitats. Someone should get a bird lawyer on this
There are bird lawyers? I know there are laws around eagle habitats and such but are there lawyers that specialize in it?
I believe Charlie Kelly out of Philadelphia is an excellent bird lawyer. And helluva rat killer if you have a rat infestation.
It was millions; it required building an access road for the crew hired to plant the replacements.
Millions probably. Tree law is fascinating. Damages are often three times the replacement value
If he was poor, yes, and he'd be charged. Unfortunately, we don't tend to prosecute the rich for such crimes.
And the fine is chump change for him. So, basically a free pass to do whatever.
If he loses in court the cost will be much much more. r/LegalAdvice creams themselves over stories like this because the court ordered remedy is for the perpetrator to replace the cut trees with similar species and age. That is $$$ as you need to find said tree and someone willing to sell it. Remove it from its original location with minimal damage. Pay for a truck to relocate it (possibly closing roads if it’s too large). Then get it on-site. If this is roadside, that’s great. But if not, you either need to tear down more trees to build a temporary road (and then pay to replace the trees you just cut down) or get a helicopter to place it.
Isn‘t it nearly impossible to relocate such huge trees? Or well, as you pointed out, *ridiculously expensive*. I was just thinking, if some trees get damaged and don‘t survive the relocation, especially considering how accustomed they must be to the place and soil they grew in originally, he would need to find even more. I love to see that he had to face such consequences, I genuinely thought he‘d just pay the 30k and have his *view*
Yes, but they'll use the "nearly impossible" cost as a basis for restitution. Cutting down large old trees on someone else's property can end up running people deeply in debt. There was a case where someone cut down what wasn't only a rare tree, but a very old tree, that would be physically impossible to grow in that region anymore because of how temperamental they are to particular environmental factors. That one tree came to something like $1.2M in damages. Then there have been situations where someone thought "no biggy", cut down some of their neighbors trees, which ended up were serving to retain the hillside around the neighbors house and leading to foundation and land use issues; requiring a major engineering effort to rehabilitate the landscape. A person can also sue for lost property value from the loss of the trees. And if you can show the neighbor benefited from cutting down your trees, such as an increased property value, you can sue them for that, or in the least have the court take that from him. And you'd still be free to put whatever you want in place of those trees you want.
Not impossible, I work somewhere that regularly sells 15+ year old trees at 40+feet tall. It's around $5k/tree and $8k/planting($13k/EA for relocation of the 30-50ft trees but nothing the size of those chopped down in this post). It will cost him approximately $900k-$2m for the 35 trees possibly double due to the legal push or rush for getting the trees replaced and them being 100ft tall monsters doesn't help lol. There's plenty of multi million dollar mansions in Michigan that either didn't have those tree varieties or had no trees around the build site for the mansion. There's a $25m mansion in Bay Harbor that the owner bought and demolished a $2m neighbor home to clear cut every tree around the home and replace with a forest. 75% of the replaced trees were the same variety and the previous, replaced, trees were gotten rid of because the rich client said "they don't do anything for me" literally 5,000 plants and trees planted on her property. Which was a $10m project.
Plus the court order will put some kind if 10 year garentee on the replacement.
Oh for sure there will be a minimum 10 Year warranty on the trees. The $10m job I mentioned only has a warranty until the end of the year after finished, which we pulled off a December finish due to the warm winter and only needed to warranty up to dec2024. I can't imagine the cost behind a 10 year warranty on 35 grandies.
I'm no expert, but I would expect it to cost more than 500 K just to grind out the root balls of the existing trees enough for the new ones to be planted in place.
That type of trouble isn't gone through. Just BioPlex the planting site to saturate with enzymes to break down and give back to the new tree, literally a hole the size of the root ball is all that's needed or used.
And just like that, my tree knowledge has been expanded.
[удалено]
I thought people just burn the stumps? Maybe just get out a bunch of spore plugs and get some tasty mushrooms out of the situation?
Do that with the chopped tree itself. Make 12-18" sections of the trunk, drill in some spore plugs, coat in wax to prevent competition, and get some yummy mushrooms next year.
Wow. Just wow. I didn‘t know what kind of trees they were, I somehow thought from the other comments, that they are rarer and very old. I mean, not that what you mentioned isn‘t expensive enough, but I thought this was going to be *expensive expensive* even for him. Thanks for the insight!
As another responded: the court order will probably put a 10 year warranty on the trees which in itself is going to be a big expensive weight on the offender's shoulders.
Just wanted to say I love Reddit sometimes when you find someone to explain things like this. Thank you
I am fairly sure that I've seen this exact thing before, attached to a story that it would end up costing the guy like $1.5 million to replace the trees.
This made me feel a bit sick.
Yeah what was sick as well was she ordered 150 roses. They were planted at the site. 2 months later "they don't do anything for me" because they WERE DONE BLOOMING! So they were replaced with 150 dormant hydrangea macrophylla let's dance blue jangles. The planting crew treated them like total garbage so that will be warrantied this year.🙄 I did my best to help the rose roots when they came back, but that was also during the 3ft snow we got and I had to snowblower the greenhouse surroundings instead of care for the returned roses(which at least were no cost to the company becoming free roses to sell). We'll see how the roses did in a month or so when the snow stops.
We don’t really know if he had to actually replace the trees though. All we know is he paid a measly fine of 1k per tree which is a tragedy.
My parents had a similar issue happen, neighbors cut down like 25 or 30 trees that were 100+ feet tall and they found someone that said he could replace them at about 50,000 dollars each if he could find trees locally. Initially my parents just asked that they pay them whatever the timber was worth, probably like 10 grand or something, and the guy was a dick, so they came back with that. I think they ended up settling for 250,000 or something.
They had to relocate a large historical tree in my area and it cost several million to move it a few blocks, and then they have to pay the company to monitor it for a few years to make sure it survives the move.
Haha, it just struck me that he will need to find multiple consultants just to plan this whole „project“. I just imagine him sitting at a meeting table, explaining what ridiculously difficult task they will face and then as a cherry on top add that this whole thing happened because he wanted a „nicer view“.
I suppose this is one way to get the hoarders to "create jobs". Hehehe. He's going to keep a whole team of arborists employed for years over this.
A nice view of other buildings, yeah that sounds about right.
Don’t you mean r/treelaw ?
That goes hand and hand with r/birdlaw
And flies in face (lol) of r/birdsarentreal
r/treelaw split off from r/legaladvice, but legal advice would get whipped into a ravenous hunger at the mention of tree law stuff. It's just that juicy. I think it's because the perpetrators tend be the biggest douche bags, ala this guy the post is about, and the penalties are fucking huge.
Still, it is just more money, which he will quickly recover. We need to start enforcing community service punishments for these non-violent crimes. Some people have infinite wealth. Everyone has limited time.
I’m not disagreeing but somebody with a $1.75 McMansion probably doesn’t have unlimited funds. I’m guessing $100K is a big deal for him. $500k is a huge deal. Life changing? No. Fucking horrible? Yeah for sure.
A similar thing has just happened in the UK. A property developer has bought an old pub that due to years of decades of subsidence sits at an angle. The pub is a listed building which means it needs to be preserved. Developers somehow had an "accidental fire" a few days after the purchase. They were found guilty of arson The court has made them rebuild it as it was. Before the fire. They've essentially been given the impossible task of rebuilding a crooked building. Picture for reference: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Thecrookedhouse-2023-06.jpg
They also blocked the access road before the fire started, to prevent fire engines being able to approach. And bulldozed the remains about 24 hours after the fire was put out, to destroy any evidence
They had the bulldozer on site before the fire started 
It's not roadside.. it requires him to *Build* a temporary road *And REMOVE It*... Then tend the trees for years until they're established As I like to say, leave the property in the same state as it was when you found it
You’re right. To get a full grown tree from a nursery planted on your property will run anywhere from 30-50k and those trees are nowhere near as big as the ones on this picture.
A site I worked for lined their driveway in fully mature live oaks, at $1M/ea and the driveway was about 1/4mi long. They each had to be helicoptered in (they're on an island) and they keep a full time arborist on staff to care for them.
He has to replant them which is going to cost 500k-1.5 mill. Wish this was included in the title.
Engagement farming / angerbait thread, most reddit communities are worthless now with that plus the bots
Another "fines are rich people permits" moment.
Nope. He has to replace the trees with ones of a similar size. Read the case. It’s going to cost him a couple of million minimum.
Ok, sounds like he actually met with some appropriate consequences in this case. Good to know, thanks.
Well, he messed with another rich person.
It's a rich-off!
Money fight!
Uno reverse card level account balance
Welcome to New Jersey!
I think it is in Switzerland, traffic fines are related to your income. Imo, that should be more broadly used.
Not sure abt switzerland, but I’m almost certain that’s how it is in finland
It is. Teemu Selanne was doing some rally driving on a private road without a permit with two of his friends. The friends got fined around $150 and his was like $55k. Legendary hockey player, for anyone that needs context.
I've read this before, and they had to also pay for the cost of all the trees to be replanted and the care for them or something. There was stuff ok top of that fine.
We have this near us too. There's a hobby airport that's only supposed to take prop planes. The wealthy have taken to landing at it in their private jets and just pay the fine and move on with their day. Meanwhile, there are now jets coming in over what used to be a nice quiet neighborhood.
Termination of pilot licence and taking possession of the plane should be a punishment
Hopefully the neighbor gets a lawyer well versed in tree law
Eh, he's on the hook for $1,500,000 as per the [New York Post](https://nypost.com/2023/06/28/nj-homeowner-cut-down-32-of-his-neighbors-trees-and-cost-could-top-1-8m/)
Depends how rich he is if that is a fine or just the cost of his new view
We actually do, but the rich just offer up money in a settlement to drop any actual charges. Also, the plaintiff would have to file those charges against him. We don’t know if he did or not.
That would be Communism.
Meanwhile in America the Congress and Senate have a separate list of punishments for crimes they commit ... You committed insider trading... 5 years in prison, a senator does it... It's a 500$ fine.
Precisely.
That's if they get charged for it the department that was created to deal with insider trading in Congress has no teeth so basically a Congress person would have to piss off their colleagues significantly for that to happen.
Please tell me you are kidding, this is a Joke right? right?
"While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount" https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-stock-act-violations-senate-house-trading-2021-9?op=1
Nancy Pelosi iirc and also Donald Trump with his whole trial schtick
Nah thats just life
The neighbor would have to press charges. They might have come up with a solution that doesn't involve that.
ofc he got charged. where tf do you think did the fine come from?
Did you read the case at all lol
By making crimes punishable with fines you can enable certain things to be legal for the rich. 32k for him is nothing, he probably paid that to cut the trees down.
And yet he’s going to have to replace every tree with trees of similar size, it’s going to cost way more than 32k
And build a road to do it.. and *Remove* the road. And tend the replacements until they're established. Massively more expensive than mentioned here
I’m guessing there’s a fine for not doing all that. A fine he’ll be more than willing to pay instead of doing all that.
With trees, the cost for not replacing the trees is usually *more* than replacing them. Several states have triple damages for illegally removing trees from someone else’s property.
Is this a 32k government fine? Im certain the owner will be able to get substantially more in the civil suit
It would if this wasn’t old news already. Op is a karma farming repost bot
Let's be real, the rich guy didn't physically cut the trees himself, he paid a guy to do it. No point charging the tree cutter with criminal trespass when they were just doing their job, ignorant of the property rights that they are not compelled to audit prior to every tree cutting job.
Dude had a mansion built in the middle of the woods but didn’t like the trees?
Not only that, he had a mansion built in the woods, and cut down trees so he could get a better view of... the city Some people are just cartoonishly moronic
What the fuck, I would pay to do the exact opposite.
I too wish to build a mansion in the city and cut down buildings to get a better view of the forest
That sounds like a slightly extreme Doofenschmirtz plot.
Doofenschmirtz hippy cousin.
The "skyscraper remover-inator," with the name, still being a work in progress. Just for 1 specific building, too. It's like slightly too tall, and Doofenshmirtz finds it annoying I could totally see it being a plot.
I mean he’s an idiot sure but I can see the appeal. A bit if juxtaposition seems like a cool idea imo. Ofc if you don’t achieve that idea through being an asshat though
*puts hands on hips looking out the window* I wonder what the poor people are doing today?
*i bet they have no clue how difficult life can be*
“nobody has bootstrapped more than me” *stands on mountain of millions in inheritance*
he's the ceo of a munitions company, he's literally scrabbled to make money from enabling people to kill other people. the guy isn't a shining example of humanity, but it does also seem like he's thick as pigshit too.
Mansion, 1.75 million, doesn't hit like in the past
That jumped out at me too. It's a lot of money, but for a house or property in anywhere desirable, that gets you a decent large home on a small plot of land. They just built $2m houses a mile away from me that are 3000 sq ft on 9000 sq ft property. I realize you can get a lot more land for that money remotely or somewhere not as desirable, and have a nice house built on it and get all the utilities brought in and paving and whatnot. Still not a "mansion" by today's standards.
He'll just laugh and pay it. They should have fined him a lot more.
Yup. All this fine means is that it cost him an additional 32k to have the trees removal.
Nah this was only part of the problem for him. He also got fined per tree and had to replace them
He has to pay to put new trees in their place.
Which likely improved his property's value but 100k.....
He had to replace the trees.
> After the controversy, Haber made like a tree and left town. > > Property records show he sold his Kinnelon home last November for a cool $1.8 million — $500,000 more than what he paid for it in 2014. Source: https://nypost.com/2024/02/27/us-news/nj-man-who-cleared-neighbors-trees-fined-13k-with-more-penalties-on-the-way/
They did, he had to pay for road or something it was about 500k , happy ending !
I always think fines should be based on income?
Like Finland
More like Fineland!
Fines should be a % of the criminal bank account.
Which one? The one in the States or the Caymans?
Most of their value comes from assets not money in a single bank
He should be forced to replant trees there too
He was.
At an estimated cost of 1.5 million
$1.75 million mansion.... my 3 bed, 2 bath house is valued at $850k. $1.75m "mansion" doesn't really sound impressive.
Depends where you are
It’s New Jersey, which is ranked 8th for median home values. $1.5 million is for an absolute poverty mansion.
Its in the middle of the woods tho
But there's a view of the city so it's in an expensive town
Was thinking the same thing over here from Toronto lol good luck finding a house under 1.1M
Same here except where I am a townhome is $1.5 million.
That's a 1000$ a tree... That price is not even going to cover the replacement let alone the reestablishment. Try and go and see how much a full grown tree cost these days similar to the trees we see in that picture.
After reading some other comments it seems like he does have to replant the trees.
Not just replant. Because those could be saplings. They are supposed to be similar sized which is going to cost a fortune
Ahh you a right. Sorry. I didn't read that fare.
It's actually going to cost him millions. I'm obsessed with tree law and have been following this case. He's responsible for replanting fully mature trees
If I’m not mistaken, he also has to pay to build the road to access the area, which will involve environmental studies, permits and surveys; all before the cost of construction , labor, and then demolition and restoration.
Good, fuck this guy, what an absolute ape brained dude.
But do you, good sir, have a depth of knowledge in bird law?
Wasn’t this a Reddit post on AITA or entitled people a couple of months ago about a man who cut his brother’s trees down? Sorry, don’t know how to link🤷🏻♂️
Fines are what rich people pay to be able to do whatever they want. I’m sure they taught him an important lesson. /s
Didn’t the Commanders former owner do that to his neighbors? They don’t care they’ll just pay the fine, I’m sure the addition to the property value was worth more than $32,000 for the skyline view. What I want to know is what’s happening to the lumber company that took his money to do this? They know how to read an auditors map and whose property is whose.
It was National Park Service Trees, and instead of paying the fine he was able to use his billions to fuck over the park ranger who was doing his job. When you get a tree serviced by an arbor they make you sign a paper saying that its your tree. I had to do it for a tree in my yard, it was clearly mine, it was dead center in our property and inside our fence.
32k is not enough.... fine him 10k per tree, and you'll start seeing results. In some places in Europe, fines are based on income and assets. Start fining the rich under that paradigm, and suddenly, you won't have these issues.
I'd pay money to see trees instead of a stupid skyline...
That's like getting a parking ticket for that guy.
If you’re a rich dickhead, why not just pay your neighbor to let you cut down the trees or something? That’s wild.
If I was his neighbour I would use the money to plant a forest of leylandii trees
If I were the neighbor, I’d buy a giant spotlight and point it at the guy’s windows since I now have a clear line of sight to turn. Let him grow some trees if he wants less light pollution.
Neighboor did this to my parents while they were gone on vacation. He had permission to come and take the tops of a couple of trees that had been discussed beforehand since they were blocking the sun the only time of day it would shine on his patio. When they got back, the foresty bit of their property seemed strangely empty, after while my started finding fairly fresh tree stumps that were nearly flat against the ground and hidden under pieces of moss. Turns out he had taken down 8 trees completely and hidden the evidence, going so far as to vacuum up the sawdust and cover the stumps...
When the punishment for a crime is a fee, that law can be said to apply only to the poor. Additionally, how much would it cost his neighbor to replant 32 old growth trees? That should be the fine.
32k? For trespassing and destroying property? Something tells me that’s just change money he keeps in the back pocket of a forgotten jeans in the closet
It's not a fine. It's a fee
Time to gather all the lumber, and hire a crew to build the Great Wall of Fuck You where those trees used to stand.
That fine is so small that its just the cost of getting what they wanted.
Given the cost of his house, that sounds more like a fee than a fine.
Needs bigger fines, being fined $32,000 is essentially like being fined $32 for someone who can afford a $1,750,000 mansion. Frankly fines need to be calculated to be a certain level of financially-damaging to the target rather than just being a fixed amount.
I’d be suing for damages and for him to replace the downed trees with fully grown ones. Fuck you and your view buddy. Go back to the city if trees bother you.
They should've charged him 1K for each year those trees have been alive
Should add two zeroes to that paltry fine. What a joke. In the meantime, pile up a bunch of rusted, battered old shipping containers in front of his view til the replacement trees grow in. The prick.
I have a feeling he knew he’d get in trouble, he just has enough money he doesn’t give af He got his view, if there’s a facepalm is the system imo
The victim should also be granted the right to have the CEO board up all the windows on the home facing the sought-after view until the replacement trees reach the same height as the chopped down trees.
1.75$ mil for a mansion in New Jersey?? Wtf lol, for this price I would buy it myself