Pennsylvania.
This is one of those things that you never expect to happen to you.
The west edge of my house is 15 feet from the property line. Five feet beyond that property line, my next door neighbor built a fence (building the fence directly on the property line wasn't practical since it slopes downward - where she choose to build the fence is flat), therefore there is a 20 foot corridor between the fence and the edge of my house. We let this area grow wild with small bushes and trees, but it was by no means unsightly, it looked like a natural forest. The primary reason that we let it grow naturally was for privacy - blocks the view into the large dining room window - and we want to discourage anyone from walking from the street into the back through this corridor. By the way, the property line is marked with metal stakes protruding 3 feet out of the ground with orange caps on the top every 20 feet or so.
We never knew that this was a problem for our neighbor but yesterday while we were at work she had a landscaping crew completely level all of the growth in the 20 foot corridor (15 feet by 50 feet of which was on our property). This included bushes and trees, 2 trees with diameters of 4 inches and several smaller ones. I have not spoken to the neighbor yet - I want to calm down a bit first and see what my options are. It could have been an error on the part of the landscaping crew, but I doubt it. More likely, the neighbor thought that she was doing us a favor, but made no attempt to contact us.
My question is what recourse do I have in this situation?
This is one of those things that you never expect to happen to you.
The west edge of my house is 15 feet from the property line. Five feet beyond that property line, my next door neighbor built a fence (building the fence directly on the property line wasn't practical since it slopes downward - where she choose to build the fence is flat), therefore there is a 20 foot corridor between the fence and the edge of my house. We let this area grow wild with small bushes and trees, but it was by no means unsightly, it looked like a natural forest. The primary reason that we let it grow naturally was for privacy - blocks the view into the large dining room window - and we want to discourage anyone from walking from the street into the back through this corridor. By the way, the property line is marked with metal stakes protruding 3 feet out of the ground with orange caps on the top every 20 feet or so.
We never knew that this was a problem for our neighbor but yesterday while we were at work she had a landscaping crew completely level all of the growth in the 20 foot corridor (15 feet by 50 feet of which was on our property). This included bushes and trees, 2 trees with diameters of 4 inches and several smaller ones. I have not spoken to the neighbor yet - I want to calm down a bit first and see what my options are. It could have been an error on the part of the landscaping crew, but I doubt it. More likely, the neighbor thought that she was doing us a favor, but made no attempt to contact us.
My question is what recourse do I have in this situation?