A treatise that is both informative and entertaining, Understanding Tree Law is the first in-depth treatment of this often contentious and confusing area of law. Written by the countrys leading expert in the litigation and mediation of tree and neighbor disputes, this handbook provides practitioners with a comprehensive explanation of all aspects of tree law, including view obstructions, damage from falling trees and limbs, nuisance from hazards, debris and roots, injury from tree failures, ownership versus encroachment, trespass and wrongful cutting of trees, and appraisal of trees that have been damaged or removed. Because its never about the trees, the author reveals an insiders perspective on tips and strategies for resolving clients matters by identifying, understanding, and defusing the psychological underpinnings that often plague these disputes. Beyond providing black letter law, Understanding Tree Law offers a unique approach toward problem solving, starting with the proposition that attorneys are first and foremost counselors at law. This socially responsible philosophy reminds us that law, like medicine, can and should be a healing profession.

From roots to canopy, a lush, verdant history of the making of California. California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest anymore. To the north the majestic coastal redwoods inspired awe and invited exploitation. A resource in the state, the durable heartwood of these timeless giants became infrastructure, transformed by the saw teeth of American enterprise. By 1900 timber firms owned the entire redwood forest; by 1950 they had clear-cut almost all of the old-growth trees. In time California’s new landscape proved to be no paradise: the eucalypts in the Berkeley hills exploded in fire; the orange groves near Riverside froze on cold nights; Los Angeles’s palms harbored rats and dropped heavy fronds on the streets below. Disease, infestation, and development all spelled decline for these nonnative evergreens. In the north, however, a new forest of second-growth redwood took root, nurtured by protective laws and sustainable harvesting. Today there are more California redwoods than there were a century ago. Rich in character and story, Trees in Paradise is a dazzling narrative that offers an insightful, new perspective on the history of the Golden State and the American West.