DOING DAMAGE
Most of the time, the object of a civil lawsuit is to collect damages. Damages may either be compensatory – intended to compensate, or to put the victim in the same place he or she would have been had the wrong not occurred – or punitive, intended to punish the wrongdoer.
Today, we’re going to talk about compensatory damages. How much has an injured party been damaged by loss of or damage to trees? The first question to be answered is whether the trees were commercial or “ornamental” in nature.
If the tree taken was commercial timber, the calculation is straightforward. Courts use either the stumpage value or the timber value. Stumpage value and timber value estimates depend upon timber volume estimates, which in turn are based upon the raw data collected in the field by timber cruisers. Put another way, estimating the value of timber taken in a trespass involves a three-step process. First, a timber cruise is conducted, and measurements are taken in the field. Timber cruising includes identifying a tree species, taking stump diameter measurements, taking measurements from the stump to the top of the tree left on the ground, taking measurements of any logs left on the ground, and recording measurements on a tally sheet. Second, the collected measurements are converted into volume estimates using established mathematical formulas. Third, those volume estimates are then converted into value estimates.
The distinction between timber and stumpage value only comes into play during the third step of the process. Stumpage value is the value of standing trees or what one might pay for the right to cut and remove trees. Timber value is the value paid by mills for cut logs. If timber value is used, it would be fair to argue to the Court that a deduction should be included for the cost of cutting and hauling the lumber. But where the timber trespass was especially egregious, don’t hold your breath waiting for compensatory-damage compassion from the bench.
But what about where the tree is not commercial timber, like that 80-year old oak that used to shade your front yard before a confused tree service company employee cut it down, thinking he was to be at your house instead of a place two streets away. The single oak’s commercial value won’t begin to compensate you for the loss.
There’s always a tension between the value a lover of the land places on his or her trees and the price tag affixed to those same trees by bean counters testifying in some cold courtroom. That’s why courts in many states apply different rules when the wrongfully taken tree was a stately old elm shading the farmhouse, a tree with maybe $1,000 in timber value but much greater value to the wronged property owner. The fact is that the wronged owner just plain likes the trees that had been taken, and the fact that his or her enjoyment of the trees might not be quantifiable in a real-estate-value analysis, makes little difference.
Anderson v. Howald, 897 S.W.2d 176 (Court of Appeals of Missouri, 1995). Melba Anderson discovered the limits of gratitude. For 40 years, she had let her neighbors, the Howalds, use a 7-foot wide path across the corner of her land to get to their property. In 1991, the Howalds – apparently deciding that they shouldn’t settle for free use of a mere path where a free superhighway could be installed – brought bulldozers onto the Anderson land to “improve” the path. They knocked down trees, dug up rocks, and gouged things out but good.
Ms. Anderson sued and won an injunction throwing the Howalds and their bulldozer out, but the trial court only gave her $6.40 in damages.
She appealed.
Held: The puny damage award was reversed. The Court of Appeals noted that “ordinarily, the measure of damages… is the market value of the property at the time it was removed from the land.” In this case, the trees being shade and ornamental trees of no commercial value, that value was slight. That seemed to offend the Court, especially when it saw the photos in the record of the extensive damage done by the Caterpillars.
The Court held that “in at least one instance, this court approved the use of before and after values of the real estate as a measure of damages… where the things taken, injured, or destroyed by a willful trespass have no substantial market value when considered in their severed state. The “general rule is that the measure of damages for trees which are not valuable for timber is the injury to the land caused by destroying them. This rule is based on the obvious reason that the value of such trees considered apart from the land would not be adequate compensation for the trespass.”
Courts, then, generally apply a measure of damages that considers the fair market value of the property with the tree and without the tree (which can be substantial for a single huge specimen that is the signature tree on the property). More often, the courts hold that the proper measure of damages is the replacement cost of trees rather than the value of real estate, even if the property owner cannot prove that the destruction of trees diminished the value of the property as a whole.
Courts often permit consideration of such replacement costs where the trees have an aesthetic value to the owner as ornamental and shade trees or for purposes of screening sound and providing privacy in determining damages. Because one simply cannot replace a 50-year old sugar maple tree with a like tree, the courts apply a multiplier to the replacement cost to account for the number of years it will take for a replacement tree to reach the size and maturity of the tree that was removed.
– Tom Root
Tree and Neighbor Law For Homeowners and Professionals 