Legal: Duke Power cut down a tree in my yard without telling me :(

gregh1 said:
My renter says Duke Power (or a proxy i assume) came by stating they needed to its cut branches near the street's power lines. (They do this every X years). The renter stated that she was just a renter and gave them my contact info. Welp, Saturday, while the renter was out of town someone came out and chopped it down, leaving a stump and a ton of wood for me to clean-up.

It was a tall, ancient silver maple, plenty of dead parts, but it had leaves still on some limbs and 3 yrs ago an arborist said it had some life left.

I'm pissed. The yard is extra hideous without a replacement, i now have to scramble to get cleanup at the busiest time of the season, b4 a ton of travel. They didn't get my permission. They didn't give me a chance to hire my own crew.

But they also didn't charge me the big bill for removal. A neighbor said it was 4 guys out there all day, i'm guessing a few thousand $ worth of work. 5+ year ago Duke (Barlett as the delegate) offered to remove it for free. So i'm guessing I won't get a bill for removal.

There's a chance they got into it and found it hazardous, like a few dead limbs i guess. But I wonder how they prove or define hazardous. The limbs were never over the lines... i feel they were heavy handed in the past when trimming back, just cuz the tree isn't that close to the road.

I feel like someone owes me some cleanup, maybe a new tree. WWYD?
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Not my practice area but I do know that Duke Power in NC has very broad authority to “trim” (we call the machine they use here to “trim” high branches the Mangler) or cut down trees that are in any of their utility easements or that they determine are sick and could threaten the line. All they have to do is provide advance notice (which is satisfied by putting a door hanger on the door or a mailer to the location) and if they cut down a tree they just have to leave it in relative small pieces on site for the property owner to clean up. They are protected in most cases from any obligation for clean-up and the cost of fighting over that is probably more than paying for removal of the downed tree so long as they left it in the minimum required chunks.

So, if the trees are within the utility easement, you really don’t have a lot of options. Chances are your tenants disposed of the related flyer or door hanger without knowing what it was, though might be worth asking them whether they recall seeing anything like that.

If the tree is outside the utility easement, Duke still has latitude to remove it if they determine it I so unhealthy that is creates risks to nearby power lines.

🤷‍♀️
 
nycfan said:
Not my practice area but I do know that Duke Power in NC has very broad authority to “trim” (we call the machine they use here to “trim” high branches the Mangler) or cut down trees that are in any of their utility easements or that they determine are sick and could threaten the line. All they have to do is provide advance notice (which is satisfied by putting a door hanger on the door or a mailer to the location) and if they cut down a tree they just have to leave it in relative small pieces on site for the property owner to clean up. They are protected in most cases from any obligation for clean-up and the cost of fighting over that is probably more than paying for removal of the downed tree so long as they left it in the minimum required chunks.

So, if the trees are within the utility easement, you really don’t have a lot of options. Chances are your tenants disposed of the related flyer or door hanger without knowing what it was, though might be worth asking them whether they recall seeing anything like that.

If the tree is outside the utility easement, Duke still has latitude to remove it if they determine it I so unhealthy that is creates risks to nearby power lines.

🤷‍♀️
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Duke Has Right To Cut Trees On Private Property - EF News

Duke has right to cut trees on private property - The Electricity Forum
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Oddly enough, the guy that was cutting my trees down for Duke called me between when you posted this and now. His crew had cut down about half of the offending trees about a month ago and hadn't been back. I thought it might be because they had to do other more urgent trees or maybe it was wet or whatever.

But he called this afternoon and said he would finish after the new year and the reason that they stopped was because of the ICE raids. Apparently all his guys are laying low or maybe left the area. Not much to do with your situation but thought it was interesting and some coincidental timing.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Oddly enough, the guy that was cutting my trees down for Duke called me between when you posted this and now. His crew had cut down about half of the offending trees about a month ago and hadn't been back. I thought it might be because they had to do other more urgent trees or maybe it was wet or whatever.

But he called this afternoon and said he would finish after the new year and the reason that they stopped was because of the ICE raids. Apparently all his guys are laying low or maybe left the area. Not much to do with your situation but thought it was interesting and some coincidental timing.
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Sounds like i can threaten ICE raids if they don't remove the stump or at least cut the chunks into smaller pieces. 💩
 
I had Piedmont power for years in south Orange I had a gigantic Popular on my property-way back down behind my house. the bottom was rotten for years Sure enough we had afreak 50 MPH 8 second wind and Boom
Whole neighborhood out-a whole string of poles toppled
I got to know the Foreman pretty well that week Told him it was my tree-what do I owe you?
He laughed, said it was $250,000 project. Also said it was the third time in 20 years that whole area had gotten demolished and they had been begging HQs for years to go underground
I always wonder if I called them years ago and asked them to take down the tree if they would have???
 
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