How would you handle this?
 

Could use a little advice if anyone has had this happen to them.

DH and I decided to go down to the farm today. Good thing that we did. Someone had come down the right side of the tree lined lane that our farm is named for and across the meadow in the back with a bulldozer! We thought a tornado had come through. Several trees are just gone and the ones that are left are severely damaged. We lost mulberries, maples, poplars and more that I haven't started to figure out from the pictures we have. I took pictures of the damage and we are in the process of figuring out who is responsible for the damage. We are just sick about it.

We think it may be a neighbor who had possibly hired a contractor who was unclear about where he was supposed to be. Whoever it was was way, way over the property line which is marked with surveyor's stakes at the corners. We went to the neighbor's house who we think it might be and spoke with his wife but he hasn't contacted us yet.

Has anyone experienced something like this? How would you handle it? Once we find out who is responsible we were thinking that they should pay to replace the trees. Obviously we can't replace the mature trees but we were thinking we could replace them with young trees. We were also thinking that we should ask them to pay for a tree expert to come look at the remaining trees to figure out what to do to save them.

sheriff report and lawyer up.

As long as you don't live on site, not much you can do. I've came home, after six months away working, and found my road destroyed.... not a thing I could do about it, after the fact. However, next time someone came down my road, uninvited, they were greeted with a steadfast owner, who told them if they wished to use the road, after that day, they'd either have to pay cash, plus fix the road, or throw down rock and gravel.

Recently, I've been dealing with a power company.... they've already spent 20K on my road.... after they are completely through, they'll end up spending another 40K....

Thing is, if you want recourse, you have to 'catch' them in the act.

I don't have advice about how to handle it, but I can give a little advice about the other advice you will get here. Ignore most of it. These kind of questions always draw out a lot of very bad ideas. So I'll tell you what not to do: don't shoot the neighbors. You sound much more reasonable than that anyway, but if the thread goes on long enough someone will suggest it. You really don't have enough information yet to decide what to do. You've done what you can so far by taking pictures and contacting the neighbor. You could call the sheriff to help you figure out who did it, but chances are they won't be much help. You could lawyer up, but that's premature. A lawyer can't do anything before you know who did it.

Keep doing what you've started already. Try the neighbor again until you get in touch with the husband. Don't go accusing them, though. Ask if they might know who it might have been. Document every conversation. Hopefully, you'll get it resolved quickly. If it was a contractor, they should have insurance to cover it. They might not, though.

:goodjob: Amen brother!

I'm going to cut and paste your response for reuse later.

I couldn't help myself and added some advice to my non-advice.

Yeah, I'd certainly not shoot the neighbors over some trees. That's just nuts. Although, I do admit to crying a little when I found the young black walnut on the ground. Right now, we're just in information gathering mode. We did present it to the wife as "hey we were wondering if..." so hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it soon.

Definitely contact the sheriff....since you aren't there often, they might have ideas on the contractors that do that sort of work in the area.

Another good place to check is at the county clerk's office. Do you have any adjacent land/landlocked parcels that may have been recently sold (and probably are somewhere near where the bulldozer trail ends)?

Hopefully whoever did it comes clean and pays for the damage without much trouble. That really is unfortunate though. Even if you get compensated, it's just not the same as having those trees. I can imagine that "sick" feeling you mentioned. And of course the person responsible probably won't think they're worth as much as they are to you, so it might be tough to agree on an amount even if they're willing to pay. Good luck getting it sorted out.

You are going about it the right way. I would feel certain it was a mistake on someones part. I own heavy equipment, it cost money to run, no one is out dozing down trees for free just to have something to do. Now since you did not see it happen, it will be difficult to prove, unless someone admits to it. As in your neighbor could say "I have no idea did not see anything" Depending on how well you know the sheriff he may or may not help. generally they do not want to get involved in stuff like this (kinda similar to a domestic dispute, hard to really benefit them) If you are "from off" and the neighbor is from there and the sheriff is from there. Well, no need to talk to the sheriff probably.

Now if it does come to the point where shooting the neighbor seems the best option, then I would suggest posting in the home defense thread as they will be able to give you better advice as to which firearm would be better suited to the task at hand?

BTW, JT never even mentioned getting even. Rent your own dozer and when they go to town go push their house down, that will show them?

I'm not much of a hunter but I have to believe tracking a bulldozer is something the average person should be able to do. Where did it come from and where did it go to. Should be very obvious. Good place to start. Take pics of where the tracks start and end and of the truck tracks it came and left on.

I agree but if someone unloaded roadside,did their thing and then loaded back up and left it's hard to say who.
I am sure your neighbor will be able to tell you who but I do have a question,,did you follow the tracks to where it did it's work and who's property it was on,,,, and if you did,,that would be my starting point I guess

Send a note to tubby, AKA Kim Jong-un, and have him fire off a nuke missile. That will let your neighbors know you are thinking about getting serious.




---apologies to the OP, we are not making light of your situation, just some of the silly advice that sometimes appears in threads such as yours. If my trees had been bulldozed, I would be livid. I hope you get it worked out satisfactorily.

I would call the sheriff. He might not help much, but you might get lucky and if you have insurance, you'll need a police report.

It's a good reason to have some cameras around the place, maybe some game cameras. Something like that would have at least given you a few pictures to help identify both machinery and people.

Not much help now. Sorry you're feeling the loss. I would, too.

Best of luck.

That was my thought - is it obvious what kind of equipment was used? Tracks in the mud? I've had both a very large tractor and a backhoe in my front field in the past week. (With my permission!) I can tell where each machine was. Tractor wheels make a very different indent than something with tracks. If it was in fact a backhoe, it shouldn't be hard to find out more information. They're $$$$$$$$, which limits the number of operators that have them. Any large farms in the area like dairies or hog operations? They tend to have excavation work done frequently. Call and see who they use? There won't be many possibilities. Someone had to have seen this, too. Other neighbors who you're friendly with?

So sorry :( I can only imagine how you felt when you saw the damage. Hoping it was an honest mistake on someone's part. Not that it takes much of the sting away :(

Yes, this.

yeah.....I think even I could track a dozer.

"---apologies to the OP, we are not making light of your situation, just some of the silly advice that sometimes appears in threads such as yours. If my trees had been bulldozed, I would be livid. I hope you get it worked out satisfactorily. "


No apologies necessary. I appreciated some of the silly advice, it gave me a chuckle which was needed today.

I've never had occasion to have to track a bulldozer but, what the heck, I'll give it a try. Most of the neighbors are starting their spring plowing but there may still be enough tracks that even I could do it.

Start by asking your neighbour for the name of their contractor.

Try the old greed trick .Tell the neighbor you want to find the guy that did all that fine work as you feel you owe him and want to make things right . You catch more files sometimes with BS .

Notice you wouldn't be lying as you owe him a swift kick and you didn't say how you planned making things right .

Not sure who you know in the area, but if nothing turns up with your neighbor. I know in my area only so many people have and operate heavy equipment and do dozer work. You may be able to check with a local ready mix company and ask who hires out to do dozer work, or ask at the local livestock places like feed stores. Unless it is a real big place, probably only a handful of people in the area hiring out to do dozer work. Not to say someone can not bring one in from afar, but for a small job it was probably someone local, it is too expensive to move them around to far for the small jobs.

Please let us know how it all goes. I am still hopeful it was an honest mistake and they will make it right. I use to hire out to do dozer work, so I know it is possible someone was shown the wrong property line etc., it does happen.

Friend of mine use to do custom dozer work, he would never work a line fence row with out both owners there . :umno:

Might not happen where you live Jim, but it does around here, same goes for logging over the property line, I have seen both happen more than once.

Stuff like that happens, and it is a mess to sort out. Everyone could have had good intentions and it is just a mistake, but everyone will get real scarce and point fingers at someone else.

So it typically gets to be a mess.

To an uninterested person you lost a few crappy old trees, not that much value.

To you you lost what you had the place for, some trees for wildlife, view, privacy, etc.

Hard to put a fair value on those different values. It really is, because both sides have some truth. But of course you were trespassed upon, so your view should carry much more weight......

I would get a sheriffs report made out, so the loss is recorded as some sort of trespass.

I would notify the insurance company, so your legal side is covered.

From those 2 you can follow up with a lawyer if you need to, or try to settle it privately if the neighbor and contractor own up to it.

If you don't notify the sheriff and your insurance, you have a harder time proving anything happened or that you had any loss when its not documented through legal channels.

Both the sheriff and your insurance might offer paths to follow; or they might brush you off and 'call us latter if you find out anything, yawn.' All depends on the people around you......

Best of luck. It is a miserable deal, and difficult to settle right.

We just had a very minor deal, the cable guy fell off a ladder on a telephone pole and crashed through a wooden fence, busting a pole and 2 sections of fence. On a very tiny scale we are going through the same, they set up a paperwork trail that makes it difficult to work this out, and then they will want to settle for 1 post, 2 cracked planks, while the whole fence will look stupid now with mis matched parts.... And so it goes. Don't know they owe us a brand new fence either ours was old and used up, but what is fair, where does one go?

A few years ago the telephone co ran a fiber optic cable down the middle of my drainage tile, wrecked my tile. It was dry for 4 years so didnt really notice why my field stayed a tad wet, until we got a wet year.

Then it took 2 years and $1900 of lawyer fees to get the telephone co to pay me $2700 to repair the tile line, and I ended up spending $3400 to improve the line since it was so damaged and needed some work. Was that fair? No but the phone co has a lawyer on retainer, so it didnt cost them any extra to keep stringing it out longer and longer. Meanwhile, my crops suffered damage every year......

What do you do.

Paul

Use the proper terminology when filing your report, and stick to your guns about it.
Trespass,Destruction of property, and Vandalism.
Other wise they will call it a civil matter, and well there is a civil side, the restitution process.that they are free and clear of, they must act on a crime.

If your neighbor does admit liability I would file a liability claim on his hometown era insurance. I have paid of claims like this for the company I work for.

I would also contact my home insurance company as well as the sheriff.

Without any info on what happened at this point, I would notify my own insurance company? If anything legal comes of this down the road, it is best to keep them informed. Sometimes they are even a bit helpful in a situation like this.

If the other side comes forth and is willing to discuss and work on the problem I do understand not going directly after their insurance co. But working with them first.

Most likely the contractors insurance co would end up being the one 'fixing' this problem tho.

If it was a friend of a friend doing the work with no I surance or licencing, then it gets more and more fun to chase after the proper fix for the problem.

Paul

Did not read all of the other posts so this might be redundant, but if you follow to the back of your property along the tracks, you might find the property the dozing work was supposed to be on. Most likely it was a mistake on the dozer contractor's part, and that's who you should go after. They may even have insurance against this kind of thing.

I hope when you look at it for awhile you get used to it or at least not mind it so much. You don't want to let the new look spoil the place for you. I'd be heartsick, too, though. :(

File a complaint with the sheriff. Cite trespassing, vandalism, destruction of private property, and anything else you can think of. You probably won't get the sheriff to arrest anyone but they might know who did it. You need a police report to file insurance. Will your insurance cover it?

Can you tell from the dozer tracks what the make and model of the dozer was? Search for who has a dozer of that make and model.

Check your state's wiretapping laws. Here, you can record a conversation between two or more people as long as at least one gives consent. That one is usually you. If you can, record any conversations with the neighbor. Anything he says has to be recorded or he can deny it later.

NimRod State law can only add to Federal Law,it can not alter or supercede.
Wiretapping is a Federal Law first and fore most.
As Far as I know it is legal to tape conversations between two parties, as long as you are one of them.
Conversations between two separate parties is not.
Consent does not need to be granted but you must announce that you are recording the conversation.
Whole reason you get that message "this call may be recorded for quality assurance".
By continuing such a conversation is considered consent.
That is how I Understand the Law.

It might be difficult to find the guilty party, but I hope you are able to. Definitely make a sheriff's report and notify your insurance as has been stated. If you can find and prove who's at fault, check your state laws about stumpage. Here in Indiana, I think, if a tree is cut, destroyed across the property line in a logging operation they have to pay triple the value of the tree...for each and every tree.

This most likely is strictly a civil matter, unless somebody intentionally and knowingly destroyed the OP's property. It's worth getting the police/sheriff report to document that it happened, but probably no crimes were committed here.

If they deem it a civil matter they will not give a report.

People are tried for mistakes all the time.

At the least its Destruction of private property.

Be a mistake or not.

Trespass and destruction of private property are surely both crimes. Even if it was an unintended error, it is still a crime. Ignorance is a pretty weak defense. The fact that they didn't own up to it pretty much shows they are aware they did something wrong.

Most I have dealt with have to write a report for pretty much every time they get out of their car. It can be reported as destruction of property, and they should come out and write a report to that effect, but even destruction of property isn't always a crime.

Not necessarily. There is such a thing as criminal trespass, but not all trespass is criminal. And property is destroyed accidentally all the time without it being a crime. Mistakes can be crimes, but they're usually not.

We don't know that yet. All we know is the OP asked one neighbor, and apparently she didn't own up to it, but she doesn't necessarily know what was done or who did or what. We have very limited information.

Come on JT, this is the internet, since when do we have to have all of the facts in order to come to a conclusion??

I say burn the neighbors out!! If you find out later they had nothing to do with it, you can always tell them your sorry. But of course never admit you did anything wrong, that would be going to far!

Judging by some of the replies posted here though I am pretty sure it was them and they did it on purpose to try and run you off, so they can buy your property cheap and move in the wifes, brothers, uncles, sister who is moving from Chicago.

Hows that?? Facts, who needs facts when you have assumptions?

How would you handle this?
 

The important thing here is to document the tracks what they look like and where they go.
Two key places will be where they unloaded and the tracks start at and where they did the work.
Like other people said it's very unlikely that they were just out there rooting around with a bulldozer so more than likely those two key points will tell you who had the work done for them and they will be responsible in part.
Good clear pictures of the tracks particularly identifying bits and pieces on the track will help you identify the particular machine. With lock there maybe tire prints of the truck the bulldozer was loaded and unloaded from that can do the same.
Call the sheriff now inform him that you believe this was criminal trespass done on purpose to damage you that's what makes it criminal trespass it puts it in a whole different category for him to investigate.
If he's like most country sheriffs he will understand that where the trucks go from and to are key points to the situation and he will have a lot more pool when he walks up to the neighbors house and says what do you know about the bulldozer.
As for making you whole very very large trees can be moved I am in this line of business I have moved trees 4 feet thick and nearly 100 feet tall. It's not cheap but it can be done and believe me the guy that did the damage and the insurance company will not want to do it. !