Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Vacation rental

Possibly no one is responsible.

In urban areas, tree owners do have a duty to their visitors, and to the public when their trees overhang sidewalks and streets, to take reasonable precautions to prevent injury or property damage. The duty is not absolute and is not insurance; it merely requires the owner to take some degree of care - pruning dead limbs, removing entire trees when they begin to lean, etc. In other words, in the city you can recover if you can establish negligence on the part of the tree owner.

As you move from the city to the deep forest, however, the property owner's duty becomes more and more diluted as the number of trees and the natural character of the area increases.

A lawyer experienced in this area of the law could certainly advise you better upon looking at the setting. However, my hunch is that at a vacation cabin site, the sudden toppling of a tree (especially if it happened in the recent storms) would be considered an accident, a so-called "act of God," and would not amount to negligence such as to make the property owner liable to you.

On the other hand, in addition to the law of negligence, there is a legal principle called "strict negligence," which makes operators of certain kinds of businesses liable to their patrons almost as though they were insurers...common carriers (buses, trains, taxis and the like) and innkeepers come to mind. I am somewhat doubtful that a vacation-cabin landlord would be strictly liable to renters for on-site trees, but that is a theory possibly worth exploring with a torts/negligence attorney (rather than us real-estate types).

By the way, my law practice is at my home on a small farm in the very rural outback of Marin County. In a mild windstorm a couple months ago, an 18" diameter limb broke off an Elm tree and landed on a client's car. My business insurance policy covered it. From this experience, I think the renter of a rural cabin is somewhat remiss in not maintaining insurance to cover him against even POTENTIAL liability to guests.