Angry Neighbor

[Shindig]

I bought my house a few years ago and a few months after I moved in, my neighbor cut down half a dozen 70-80 foot tall trees in my yard. She ignored my attempts to get in touch while I was doing my due diligence, getting the trees appraised, having a survey done, etc. and I eventually hired a lawyer and sent a demand letter. She paid out $40k on the trees and several years later she's still mad. Every time I email the HOA group, she sends me back a nasty email - they usually imply that people talk about me behind my back for getting justice for myself.

 

I'm not sure what to do about it. I've thought about replying to her nasty emails (I haven't, I sent a note after asking if we could put it behind us since it was effectively resolved, but nothing beyond that) or forwarding her messages to the rest of the HOA. It's not like she can get angrier, but maybe shedding some light on it would keep her in check. What do you think?

[Normm]

I think you're angry neighbor is getting exactly the response they are looking for.

[Wallysbears]

I think you are never going to have a good relationship with this neighbor.

[Shindig]

I think you are never going to have a good relationship with this neighbor.

 

I don't thinks so either. She's not my kind of people anyway. I just want some peace in my home.

[thefooloftheyear]

I'm guessing it was an error on the part of the neighbor to cut down the trees and didn't know that they encroached the property line..? It would be impossible to believe that they would do that knowing it was on your property..

 

Its not that you don't deserve some kind of restitution for it, but considering that it wound up costing 40K would just about burn anyone's ass for an eternity...

 

I would just accept that you will never be seen in any positive light, no matter what you do...You were within your rights to do what you did, hence the judgement in your favor...but a lot of people wouldn't do what you did, they would reach some sort of neighborly compromise that wasn't so heavy handed..

 

.02

 

TFY

[Wallysbears]

Want peace? Don't email the HOA. Then you won't hear from her.

 

 

I hate places with HOA's. Won't live there. Can you move?

[bathtub-row]

I don’t understand this situation at all. Why were the trees cut down? Were they a hazard? And why on earth would anyone think they had the right to cut trees down on someone else’s property, and why weren’t they legally stopped? None of this makes any sense.

[Shindig]

I could move, but I'm not going to. She's the only thing about the place that I don't like. I'm friendly with everyone else in the neighborhood - we have a bowling league and enjoy neighborhood parties. She ticked off our HOA president by calling him an assortment of homophobic slurs and refused to pick up dog feces off his lawn on a number of occasions.

 

I'm not quite sure it was heavy handed. I tried for 3 months to get in touch. She avoided me - calls, emails, knocking on her door, chasing her from her car to her house asking if we could talk about the trees. When I had all my paperwork together, I finally hired a lawyer and her initial response to the lawyer was to buy me some little 1 foot tall saplings from Home Depot, no offer to help with grinding down the stumps or taking down my fence to get to the stumps (her husband is a contractor with an engineering degree). Meanwhile the city was threatening to fine me for cutting trees in a protected area.

 

She's a realtor - she knows how property lines work and it's a new development with stone markers at the corners of the lots and one of the trees was INSIDE my fence line, not just inside the property line. She cut the trees with the intent to clear her view and hoped I'd never notice because I was new and might not know about the markers or something.

[vla1120]

Want peace? Don't email the HOA. Then you won't hear from her.

 

I hate places with HOA's. Won't live there. Can you move?

 

I also hate places with HOA's. I'll never live in one again!

 

I'm not really sure why the neighbor took it upon herself to cut down your trees without your approval/prior knowledge, but she will have to get over herself. What you did was within your rights, especially since she was ignoring your attempts to contact her.

 

Hopefully, you'll find peace within the walls of your house. If you are really worried about peace in the neighborhood, I supposed you could host a BBQ and invite the neighbors (including the angry neighbor) to give people a chance to get to know you and your family.

[thefooloftheyear]

No one that is on the losing end of a lawsuit is going to "make nice" now...Especially when we are talking a sizable amount of money...

 

Just accept that you will probably always have to deal with it in some way....That's what usually happens when people lawyer up...doesn't matter what the conditions are or who was at fault..

 

Not sure what you were expecting to happen??

 

TFY

[bathtub-row]

If someone did that to my property, not only would I not give a rat’s ass about whether she liked me or not, she’d find herself slapped with a lawsuit.

[Mr. Lucky]

I just want some peace in my home.

 

Why does the occasional grumpy email disturb your domestic tranquility?

 

I wouldn't hold out for any block party invites...

 

Mr. Lucky

[loversquarrel]

Just ignore her and be careful crossing the street.

Edited April 13, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
language

[Wallysbears]

You sued a new neighbor over trees. You’ll likely never speak again. If you were worried about long term repercussions, you shouldn’t have sued. Take your $40k and be happy.

[chillii]

l'm just wondering what the 40k was for that she paid out , is that how much it costed to cut the trees down , or is that what she offered you to compensate, if she did then l'd be taking that and getting on with life.

l'm not in the states but that sounds like a shytload of coin for that job.

 

On the rest , geez l dunno , 3yrs , on and on , lawyers , stress, l'm a tree hugger from way back , l might've even bought the property because of the beautiful trees, if they were still that way. But on the other hand , what's done is long long done now, dunno if l'd be interested in stressing my damn life out to that degree 3yrs later.

Think l'd drop the lot and get on with life, to hell with it.

Though l suppose that might leave you a big legal bill , so dunno.

Edited April 10, 2019 by chillii

[preraph]

I'm glad you sued the crap out of her. That was just so wrong. I'm surprised you got that much justice on it, but nothing can replace old trees like that. Grrrr.

 

I'm mad at my neighbor for cutting off an entire huge limb at the trunk of my tree that she knows is mine. I trim it back every year so it's not over her driveway, but she just had someone go and lop it off and now it looks naked, the poor tree. She's simple-minded (literally -- very low IQ at a bare minimum) and she's put roundup and killed ALL the trees in her backyard. And then she got some weird nerve thing that crippled her all of a sudden that is a mystery to everyone except me, because I'm certain it's from the roundup, her out there squirting it everywhere on everything. I'm not telling her though because I don't want her to benefit from a lawsuit, as they are having them on that product right now. She's just killed everything over there. I have no idea why she lets the ones in the front yard live. So far.

 

You're not going to make peace, so just stop trying and ignore the neighbors. Don't escalate anything else and hope they don't retaliate and make your life hell calling if your dog barks or something. Try not to get that started. But if they do start it, take her to court again and show the judge why they're retaliating. I hate the way realtors think every yard has to be bare and rip out every garden and trim every tree until there's nothing left.

 

In Dallas, one got caught taking trees down around a lake so the house that was his listing had a lake view! Man, were people mad about that.

Edited April 10, 2019 by preraph

[bathtub-row]

Oh! You already sued this person and you were awarded $40k? Sorry, I didn’t understand it that way. I was confused by the story. If that’s the case, then great. She should’ve learned her lesson and, being a realtor, she’s even more culpable as she knew good and well what she was doing. Stop worrying about it, stop focusing on it, stop acting on it or responding to it in any way. What this woman did was exceedingly ignorant and brazen and she deserved what she got. Don’t let her make you feel bad.

Edited April 13, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[major_merrick]

I wouldn't worry about the neighbor. Getting $40k was good. Probably would have been better to keep the trees from being cut down in the first place. Old trees don't grow back.

My husband had a bad neighbor like that years back, who tried taking down some trees on the edge of his property. His response? A cannon. Yes, a literal old-time Civil War kind of cannon. The neighbor had threatened to use a backhoe on the trees, so my husband told him that he would eliminate the backhoe. Eventually the lawyers and surveyors got involved. After a year of that, the neighbor sold the land in frustration after not getting his way. Apparently there's a feud between those two families that goes back almost a century. Go figure.

 

The moral of the story the way I see it - if you have a bad neighbor, make that person's life a living hell so that they end up moving out. Give no ground, make no peace, and have no regrets.

[thefooloftheyear]

 

The moral of the story the way I see it - if you have a bad neighbor, make that person's life a living hell so that they end up moving out. Give no ground, make no peace, and have no regrets.

 

 

That's great until you have a neighbor that will dish it back to you ten fold...

 

I still contend that we aren't getting the whole story here...Something about this doesn't make much sense..

 

TFY

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

Why did she cut down the trees? How soon after you moved in did she do this? When did you start trying to contact her about the trees, and what were you going to say?

 

Are you still contacting the HOA about the trees? Is she on the HOA board to be responding in a nasty way to you? I'm confused about that part of it.

 

How is she making your daily life void of peace?

[loversquarrel]

 

The moral of the story the way I see it - if you have a bad neighbor, make that person's life a living hell so that they end up moving out. Give no ground, make no peace, and have no regrets.

 

That's smart until they file a lawsuit against you or better yet you find yourself getting criminally charged.

Edited April 11, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator

[MsJayne]

She should have contacted you about the trees if they were causing a problem. Just cutting them down is obnoxious behaviour and she deserved to be sued for it.

I know exactly what you're saying, re: being talked about by gossiping neighbours. I had this problem for the first ten years that I lived in my current house, because I had the audacity to complain to the council when my immediate neighbour refused to build a proper fence. Might not have bothered me except he had a vicious dog which was making a major nuisance of itself, and then a year after I moved in, when I had a pool built and had to adhere to fencing regulations, he flat out refused to co-operate, so I had no choice but to go to the council for advice. They came down on him like a ton of bricks because of the vicious dog. That afternoon he came around to my house and banged on my door and told me I was a lowlife, (bet he wouldn't have dared do that if there was a man in my house - he's a bully and a sexist as well as a jerk). Then he told other neighbours that I had reported him about his dog - not actually true, but enough to make some neighbours judge me and avoid me. The upshot is that I have barely spoken to this guy for 15 years. I have put up with being spied on by their kids, having rubbish thrown in my yard, etc, etc. In return I grew a massive tree that blocks out their view of the mountains and drops leaves and twigs in their yard, not because I wanted to block their view, (that's just a side bonus), but because it acts as a barrier between me and this toxic POS.

The upshot is that some people are just utter pricks who will never admit when they are wrong, and you just have the misfortune to live next door to one of them. I'd stop with the emails, you're just wasting time and energy. Accept that your neighbour is nasty and ignore her.