Liability on tree falling on cars from own backyard

[Danie119]

Tonight while sitting inside the living room watching television an oak tree from the backyard fell directly onto our two vehicles. Thankfully the brunt of the damage is all on the back so the cars despite massive body damage should work. The tree isn't moved yet so we'll see when it does happen. Anyways we are renting this house and have been here a year now. There was no weather conditions today, no wind, no storms. The tree looked alright before, it has it's leaves and what not (but I'm no arborist) but after fallen (it cracked in half and fell) the wood appears rotten. I am wondering if our landlords homeowners policy should cover this. We have comprehensive coverage on only one of the two cars that we have... so we are completely, pardon my language, screwed on our other vehicle. This is preemptive as our landlord hasn't come yet to talk and deal with it, though we obviously contacted them. I am just trying to figure out what I am dealing with here. We had the fire department come and they did a report, mainly for the safety issues involved but they verified it had fallen not due to weather or yada yada yada. This has been quite a stressful evening, thank goodness it hadn't fallen in the other direction which would've been right into us in the living room *sigh*.

 

[sfitz]

You should be clear on which side of the property line the tree is actually on--this makes a difference as to who is responsible for the damages.

 

[Danie119]

It is in our backyard. We have a fence around the backyard and it fell through the fence onto the driveway. But they tree is most definitely in this yard, thus it is our landlord's property... not the neighbors or anyone's.

 

[Danie119]

Alright I know there's been no reply here, but I figured I would update and see if anyone has anything for me here.

I'm in California first of all. So our landlord has Farmer's insurance for their homeowners insurance. They said they would have someone come out in 48 hrs but have yet to see anyone yet. They called this afternoon and said they would come out Monday just to take some pictures, though most of the tree has been cleared away to get access to the cars. I did take extensive photos myself though (around 60 pictures of everything). Anyways, they did however say there would be no liability because the tree did not appear to be dying on the outside... this is from what we said unfortunately. There was leaves on the branches, but that's all we knew. There is however three large holes in the tree (not sure the term or if it has one) but the holes had hollowed out the tree and were being occupied as nests... so the stability of the tree was compromised with three areas of the tree being hollow. Other than that the wood has dry rot. So again, this is not a weather related accident---no wind, no storm... it was a clear evening.

Either way Farmer's is denying the claim. The vehicles are down at an auto body repair shop... damage for both cars totals $14,000 (AGHH!). We do have comp. on our one vehicle through Geico. Geico has now informed us they will be fixing our Chrysler and then going after Farmer's to reimburse them. If this is the case, my questions are then:

1) Do you see basis in the claim. I mean I don't see how we're at fault as we were sitting in our living room and had simply parked our cars in our driveway.

2) If Geico is successful in getting reimbursement for covering our Chrysler, can we be able to (with our own lawyer or something) go after them for the Hyundai or are we out a car? The Hyundai has even more damage than the Chrysler as it was the first to be hit by the tree.

Oy this has been so stressful. Insurance is never fun to deal with. Farmer's keeps calling it "a fallen branch"... it's a 60 ft tree that came down! Now our landlord isn't talking to us, he doesn't want to deal with it obviously, but now he's out a tenant because we shall be leaving ASAP now... need to get away from the trees. We no longer feel safe, there are many many trees around the property that DO appear to be dying (no leaves on many large branches), they will be coming down at some point and I'd rather not risk our lives this time!

 

[Gail_in_Georgia]

Typically in these cases, the owners of the insurance policies (you, your landlord) stand back and let the insurance companies fight it out. You don't consider any legal action until they've come to the conclusion as to whether they'll pay or not (and how much).

Moving out suddenly may come to bite you financially in a tender spot if you have a lease and will thus end up breaking this to move out....unless you can actually prove that the remaining trees are dead and thus may pose a risk to you and your family.

I know what you're going through. A fair number of years ago, a tree on the other side of a creek that runs behind my house fell one afternoon. Perfectly healthy tree; no wind, no rain, a nice sunshine filled July afternoon. My neighbor who was out on her deck said she heard a large "crack"; turned and stood in amazement as this huge tree fell. Took out a fence, a retaining wall, a beautiful ornamental cherry tree; luckily just missed the house.

It was a heck of a mess to clean up. Ufortunately it could never be decided who actually "owned" the tree; the homeowner on the other side of the creek said nope because it was outside HIS fence, the city said nope, they didn't own that section of land. Seems it was a "no mans" territory.

At any rate, I haven't looked at trees the same way (and I have many, many old, huge trees in my yard).

Gail