Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

“A Tree Falls in Connecticut”

Officials in Milford, Ct. agreed to take down three healthy hickory trees along an avenue after resident Una Glennon “demanded that the trees be removed because one of her grandchildren is allergic to nuts and can’t play in the pool with the other children when the nuts are falling.” Author and Common Good president Philip K. Howard detects the distortive influence of what he calls “legal fear”. (New York Times, Jul. 30). Also: Emily Bazelon, “Trees vs. children: Are nut allergies taking over the planet?”, Slate, Jul. 27.

Filed under: , , ,

8 Comments

  • One thing for sure these officials will never have to worry about failing a drug test for too much testosterone.

    • By bumper

  • You’ve got a nut allergy, how about you stay out of the pool? What’s next, the kid’s allergic to dogs, so they ask that all the dogs in town be euthanized?

  • Amy,

    I’ve read a good bit of your website and many of your comments here, and we disagree on many topics.

    But not on this one. EXCELLENT point.

    • By Deoxy

  • It occurs to me that the woman’s fears could have been easily alleviated (and she’d be within her own rights) by cutting off the limbs of the tree that overhung her yard.

    What’s so hard?

    • By E-Bell

  • Maybe just shut down the pool and save the trees 🙂

    • By nick d

  • The reference is an op-ed. The Times published a more balanced for the Times news story about two weeks ago. The news story reports that the grandson is three which the op-ed ignores. The grandmother argues that telling a three year old child no is a challenge when his siblings and cousins are playing in and around the pool.

  • Charilie B,

    That still doesn’t give her rights over other people’s property. The age of the child, in this case, is irrelevant.

    • By Deoxy

  • One of the factors that the indignant seem to ignore is the fact that the trees are not just on the city property if they are regularly dropping nuts on the homeowner’s property. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to say that the city is responsible for invading her property with a substance that may injure her grandchild. What steps the city chooses to resolve the problem(cut the trees, cut the problem tree limbs, install netting or another barrier, whatever) is up to the city, and maybe they didn’t choose the best one. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for a homeowner to take steps to stop an adjacent property owner from distributing material onto her property.

    • By Katy