Tree crashes, city not liable

HILLSIDE DISTRICT — The city’s Risk Management Department has notified a Burbank man that the city will not pay for damage done to his car when the limb of a city-owned liquid amber tree crashed onto his Toyota Camry.

Jeffrey Daniel’s car was damaged late in July during a summer heat wave that dried out trees throughout the city, sending several limbs crashing down along Mansfield Drive. Following the heat wave, 33 damage complaints were filed against the city, said Anne Lovano in the city’s Risk Management Department. So far the City Attorney’s review of individual claims has determined that the damage is not due to city negligence and therefore the city is not liable in the cases that have been reviewed.

“The California government code provides that we are liable only if we create or maintain a dangerous condition and should have had notice of the dangerous condition within a reasonable time to correct it,” Chief Assistant City Atty. Juli Scott said. “When we get a claim such as a tree limb falling on a car, one of the first thing we look at is if and when the tree was last inspected.”

Since the trees on Mansfield were inspected in 2005, which fulfills the city’s maintenance requirement, the city is immune from liability, Lovano said. Extreme temperatures were to blame for drying the limbs of otherwise healthy trees, causing limbs to break throughout the city, she said.

“If it were not heat and we failed to do something then we would be paying for it,” Lovano said. “But this was very hot, humid weather — on the day in question it was over 100 degrees. But when last inspected that tree was found to be in good health.”

When Daniel submitted his $1,400 damage claim, he pointed out that he asked the city to pull out the same tree years earlier because he thought it posed safety concerns, he said.

“I requested that this tree be removed, and now the same trees ends up dropping again and damaging my car,” he said. “Obviously, I’m not allowed to take the tree out because it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the city.”

But a citizen complaint does not make a tree “dangerous” in a legal context, Scott said. Weather-related damage is considered an “act of God” and therefore not the city’s responsibility, she said.

“Just because someone asks us to take it out doesn’t mean that it was dangerous under the legal definition to impose liability on the city,” she said. “We saw a lot of trees coming down in high heat or high winds — that’s considered an act of god and we’re not responsible for that.