MONTPELIER - The Vermont Supreme Court has affirmed a $1.8 million award to a Woodstock family to cover damages caused by a neighbor who cut down their trees and harassed them.
In Friday's ruling, Associate Justice Marilyn Skoglund wrote that the jury found that the plaintiffs, Kaveh and Leslie Shahi and their children, had been the victims of vicious harassment at the hands of their neighbor.
"The evidence was uncontested that, after plaintiffs refused defendant's demand to remove an approximately 100-year-old tree located on their shared property line, defendant waged an offensive of intimidation and vandalism that took a large personal and financial toll on plaintiffs," she wrote.
In 2003, while Kaveh Shahi was away, Daniel Madden cut down the tree even though the Shahis had not given him permission to, court records said. Kaveh Shahi sued Madden and accepted a $5,000 settlement, the court said.
A short time later, Shahi found that a mature tree on his property had been "girdled," its bark cut back so that it would die. In September 2005 another tree had been cut down, and a number of trees had been girdled.
The court said the Shahis' bird feeder and vehicle also were vandalized, and their dog appeared to have been poisoned to death.
A neighbor told the Shahis that Madden did not like the family because they were not Christians, according to court records.
On July 13, 2006, a jury in Windsor Superior Court awarded the Shahis $1.8 million in damages.
Madden appealed, arguing that he did not cut down many of the trees, only girdled them.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument, saying "to ask injured parties to forgo compensation until such time as every one of their doomed trees has dropped its final leaf would be absurd."
