258 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 170. 



The extensive cutting of roots, made necessary by modern city street 

 conditions, where business blocks with their deep foundations are often 

 erected within a few feet of the highway trees, and where the placing of 

 sidewalks, curbings and various other modern conveniences necessitate 

 considerable excavating, renders even the most perfect specimen of tree 

 almost worthless in .a short time. 



COURT DECISIONS CONCERNING DAMAGES TO TREES. 



Of the many court decisions regarding the injury and death of trees, 

 quite a few are valuable as precedents. It is too often the case that the 

 official representatives of public-service corporations, which hold franchises 

 granted by cities and towns, assume that the corporations have entire 

 jurisdiction over everything interfering in any way with the operation of 

 their systems. As regards this point may be quoted the decision of a 

 justice of the Supreme Court, who stated that public-service corporations 

 "have only such rights as others to the use of streets, and are subject 

 therein at all times to reasonable regulation or even to termination at any 

 time if the supreme authority acting in the public service shall so deter- 

 mine." He further maintains that "they have no rights of property in 

 the streets, and their privileges are merely temporary ones, which may 

 be recalled at any time and which carry with them no right of property 

 whatever." 



From a lack of understanding of or inability to conform to the law, 

 and a disregard of the rights of the people, this often leads to friction 

 between those having special care of trees and representatives of the 

 corporations. The heads of corporations have always been better dis- 

 posed toward public utilities than their representatives, and some of 

 them have laid down stringent rules in regard to shade trees which their 

 representatives are supposed to follow. Most States, however, recognize 

 that trees located on public highways enhance the value of the abutter's 

 property, and in case of the destruction of or injury to such trees, the 

 abutter has the right to claim damages. 



In a case decided by the Appellate Division, New York, an owner of 

 land abutting on a city street, whose ownership did not extend to the 

 middle of the street but "who had set out ornamental shade trees on the 

 sidewalk in front of his premises at his own expense and with the sanction 

 of the municipal authorities, is entitled to have such trees protected 

 against negligent or willful destruction at the hands of third parties. He 

 has a right in such trees in the nature of an equitable easement, and when 

 one is girdled and destroyed by a horse, may recover from the owner of 

 the horse the damages thus sustained." 



In Minnesota an injunction was granted by the judge to restrain the 

 defendant from cutting, mutilating or in any way damaging trees whose 

 limbs were threatened by an old house that was being moved through the 

 streets. Along the route which the building must take in the course of 



