Zeal in Pruning Tree Yields Plaintiff Big Cut : ‘I guess I got carried away.’--Julie Mattison

Julie Mattison’s trouble started on a hot August afternoon in 1982.

She and her mother, Susan Mattison, were raking leaves in the back of their house in Mission Hills.

“My mom and I decided to clean up the backyard,” the 17-year-old senior at Los Angeles Baptist High School in Sepulveda said. “My mom asked me to trim the tree, so I did it.”

The tree was in the yard next door. Julie got a saw, climbed on top of a wall and started sawing.

By the time she finished, the 30-foot flowering Bauhinia variegata, commonly known as an Oriental orchid tree, had been reduced to a five-foot stalk.

“I guess I got carried away,” said Julie, a part-time bagger at a Vons grocery store, shrugging her shoulders this week outside a courtroom in Van Nuys.

A day after the incident, neighbor Carollee Dunson returned home from a camping trip and saw the damage.

“I was in shock,” said Dunson, a 43-year-old administrative aide in the UCLA dance department. “That tree was gorgeous. I loved that tree. And the Mattisons ruined it.”

On Wednesday, she was told she will receive double the cost of replacing the tree.

After deliberating 90 minutes, a Van Nuys jury awarded her $8,753 in actual damages for its replacement, along with $100 in punitive damages. Moreover, because of a state law designed to protect trees against “wrongful injury,” Superior Court Judge Martha Goldin doubled the amount of the award for actual damages to $17,506.

Upon hearing the jury’s verdict, the Mattisons’ attorney, Robert Priver, shook his head and said, “You’d think Julie Mattison was a tree assassin.”

Dunson’s lawyer, Donald Williams, said, “I’m overjoyed. This is wonderful.”

During the two-day trial, Williams called an employee of a Woodland Hills nursery who testified that a new Bauhinia variegata would cost $1,800.

But to plant the 54-inch pot containing the tree, a 100-ton crane with a 210-foot boom would be necessary. To rent the crane would cost $6,000. Along with other costs, the total to replace the damaged tree would run $8,753, the witness testified.

“Outrageous,” said Priver. “Do you mean to say you need a 210-foot crane to replace a little tree?”

The expert said yes.

In Dunson’s original suit against Julie Mattison, filed Oct. 28, 1982, she charged that Julie “knowingly and intentionally trespassed and willingly and intentionally sawed, pruned and otherwise cut one tree of Bauhinia variegata variety.” For the offense, Dunson asked for $126,259.

Settlement Offered

Two years later, though, Dunson said she would settle with the Mattisons for $3,753, court records show.

The Mattisons offered $2,500. That wasn’t enough, and the case went to trial Tuesday.

Julie Mattison testified Wednesday that she did not think she was doing anything wrong when she cut the tree.

“I just wanted to clean up the lawn,” she said. “There were leaves falling on our side of the yard, and I thought I’d do something about it.”

Another witness was Karen Selson, the person responsible for the tree in the first place.

Before Dunson moved into the house on Blackhawk Street in 1975, Selson was the owner. Selson testified that she planted a root stem from a tiny, two-inch Bauhinia variegata plant bought at a drug store 15 years ago. The plant’s price: 99 cents.

Former Owner Comments

“It just grew and grew and grew and finally turned into a tree,” Selson said in an interview. “I never would have planted it if I knew it would cause this much trouble.”

Julie Mattison and her two sisters used to go into Dunson’s house to feed her dog. No more.

The neighbors used to chat in their backyards. No more.

Once the 99-cent plant started to mature and grow, it became unruly, Susan Mattison said, and started to shed leaves on her side of a cement wall that separates the two properties. Several times the Mattisons trimmed the tree in an attempt to reduce the leaf droppings, Dunson said.

On the day Dunson returned to see her once prized Bauhinia variegata reduced to a stalk, she said, she screamed at the Mattisons.

“This has gone way too far,” she recalled saying. “I’m going to do something about this.”

Attorney’s Fees

Over the last three years, Dunson said, she had paid more than $8,000 in attorney’s fees on the case.

She said Tuesday, though, that she would not have filed suit against Julie Mattison if “she had apologized to me.”

The Mattison house is covered by insurance, which Priver said would pay any judgment.

Despite Wednesday’s ruling, little seems to be settled between the neighbors.

Susan Mattison said: “I have to live behind someone I don’t talk to. But, if that’s the way she wants it, then I’m not going to let it ruin my life.”

Carollee Dunson said: “I’m wet. I’m clammy. I have rashes on my arms from all of this. I feel sick inside.”

Attorney Priver said: “I plan to appeal the ruling.”