What Happens If a Neighbor Cuts Down My Tree in Massachusetts?

A tree standing on your land is your property in Massachusetts, and M.G.L. c. 242, sec. 7 answers a willful cutting with three times the assessed damages. The same section reduces that to single damages where the person doing the cutting had good reason to believe the land was his own or that he was otherwise lawfully authorized.

The multiplier and its off-ramp, in one sentence each

Section 7 makes a person who without license willfully cuts down, carries away, girdles or otherwise destroys trees, timber, wood or underwood on the land of another liable to the owner in tort for three times the amount of the damages.

Then it qualifies itself. Where the defendant is found to have had good reason to believe the land was his own, or that he was otherwise lawfully authorized to do the act, he is liable for single damages only.

Both halves have to be read together. The honest boundary mistake is answered at cost. The deliberate cut, made without permission and without any reason to think the land was the cutter’s, is what carries the multiplier.

Why valuation is the real fight

Section 7 multiplies “the amount of the damages,” and it never says what a tree is worth. That figure is established through appraisal, and it depends on the species, the size, the health, the position on the lot and what the tree was doing there, such as screening a view or shading a house.

Mature trees can appraise at figures that surprise people on both sides of the dispute. A general article cannot tell a Massachusetts property owner what a particular tree was worth, and neither can a thirty-second video. That number comes from an arborist or appraiser looking at the actual site.

Related conduct in the criminal chapters

Cutting another person’s trees can also draw attention under the criminal sections of chapter 266, and a separate statute, M.G.L. c. 87, sec. 3, governs public shade trees under the authority of a municipal tree warden. Those are distinct provisions with their own elements. The civil treble damages rule described here comes from c. 242, sec. 7 alone.