Originally published at: New Jersey man cuts down 32 of his neighbor's trees to get better view, thinking the fine would be $32,000. Turns out he's on the hook for nearly $2 million. | Boing Boing
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Oh yes, that’s the ticket.
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My goodness, this is satisfying! Now do literally any other egregious offender.
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Not surprisingly, the arsehole in question – Grant Haber – is the founder of a munitions company and surveillance-state vendor and has appeared as a guest on the far-right cable network OAN.
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The schadenfreude is now extra strong!
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It seems unfortunate that all the trigger-happy castle doctrine types are being wasted on pool cleaners and hapless delivery drivers when there are guys like this to be dealt with.
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Hey, look! Another rich asshole!
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He probably thought that laws are for little people, but forgot that the ones protecting mature trees are big boy property owner laws, and so they have real teeth.
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“Enhance the view”
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How did he even get anyone to cut the trees down? Did he just lie and tell the person it was his property? Was the property owner in on this? I don’t understand how this even happens. Can you just call up an arborist and have trees on anyone’s property removed without the arborist verifying anything?
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You don’t get rich by paying arborists!
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If you call a tree cutting company and tell them, “Cut down 32 trees on my property” they aren’t going to go pull up county records to make sure it IS your property. They are gonna take your word for it because who the hell DOES this shit?!
And is it just me, but the fact that they left the “debris” and didn’t even clean up is just somehow the icing on this shit cake!
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As the original article indicates, he hired a cut-out (no pun intended) who then hired another tree-cutting firm to do the actual work. The sub-contractor probably thought it was a legit job. The contractor’s situation may be more … interesting.
It’s more stupid than that. He knew the law existed and thought the fines were pocket change, but he didn’t do his homework.
Now he’s out of pocket a lot more than he bargained for, and the new view he thought would command a premium on his property’s listing price will go back to the old view of mature trees.
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Yah, a lot of open questions here. 32 trees is a lot. For city folk, you don’t call an arborist for that, that’s logging territory. You call a local logger because that many trees need to be limbed, skidded out, and broken down. With no roads, you’re looking at a skyline operation for that. That’s big money- probably more than the fine, but if the trees are valuable you’d get the cost back (which is why people log, after all).
Around here it’s not uncommon for people with a lot of trees on their property to log some of it, but obviously only their own property. I’ve never done it, so I don’t know how it works exactly, but I imagine you need a permit which would involve a survey, which would reveal it’s not your property.
I suppose he could have paid a cutting crew under the table to fell the trees and leave them there, but again 32 trees is a lot. The casual reader may not realize how much of a mess that is. If you don’t clear it and log it properly, it’s gonna make your view worse.
I feel like there’s more to this story than we’re hearing.
Edit: and I see @gracchus answered much of this while I was typing. 
coke.gif
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As the saying goes, “punishable by fine” means “legal for the rich.”
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Shocking.
Also, NJ Man seems a lot like FLA Man. Just sans alligators.
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Reminds me of Dan Snyder
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It’s just an asshole thing to do, no matter what the fine.
Why not just knock down your neighbor’s house to get a better view? See how that works?
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ISTR that there was a case in a wilderness area (where no motor vehicles are permitted) of a National Forest (George Washington NF?) where they were clearing storm downfalls and they found a contractor that used horses to drag them out.
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