Just picture yourself taking a stroll around the park when suddenly you hear a loud crack, and a tree limb comes crashing down right on top of you. Falling limbs and branches from a dying tree pose a significant risk of injury to anybody standing below it. Reports of people losing their lives by falling trees emphasize the dangers of neglecting a rotting tree.
Who is liable: Mother nature or the property owner?
It is the responsibility of property owners to ensure the safety of their premises. A property owner is anyone with legal rights to a piece of land, such as your neighbor or a government agency, if the property is public.
One way a property owner can keep their property safe is to maintain any trees on their property. It is important to inspect the condition of a property, including trees and remove any safety hazards such as broken branches, especially after a storm.
Bad weather can uproot even the strongest trees or cause enough damage to make their limbs vulnerable to breaking. It would be almost impossible to hold anyone responsible if the tree came crashing down due to a storm or some other act of nature.
However, if the tree or its branches fell because the property owner was negligent, you may be able to file a premises liability lawsuit. A property owner is negligent if they do nothing to address a safety hazard after discovering or being informed about it. To prove negligence for falling tree injuries, the property owner must have known about the tree’s condition.
Tree injury lawsuits can be difficult to navigate
Unexpectedly encountering the crushing weight of a large tree can result in severe injuries, a broken spine, skull fractures, and, in the worst-case scenario, death. But negligence is not always easy to prove. Businesses and municipalities, in particular, will often go to great lengths to dispute allegations of negligence.
If you or someone you know suffers an injury due to someone else’s negligence, recovery should be your first priority. This may be especially hard to do when you have to worry about medical expenses and time away from work. After getting medical treatment, it may be wise to discuss your situation with a premises liability owner to determine if you have a case.
