## Facts

- Plaintiffs and defendants owned adjoining parcels of land.
- Defendants maintained a poplar tree on their own property near the boundary line.
- The tree’s roots grew underground onto plaintiffs’ property.
- The roots clogged plaintiffs’ sewer and drain pipes, requiring repeated excavation and cleaning; the last such work cost $42.28.
- The roots also extended under plaintiffs’ cement foundation wall, causing slight movement and cracking but not yet serious structural harm.
- Plaintiffs notified defendants after the sewer first clogged and requested removal of the roots; defendants refused.
- Plaintiffs filed a bill in equity seeking (1) a mandatory injunction requiring removal of the roots, (2) a permanent injunction against further encroachment, and (3) damages for past harm.
- The trial court found the encroachment and resulting harm but ruled defendants were not liable and dismissed the bill; plaintiffs appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a landowner may obtain equitable relief to compel an adjoining landowner to prevent or remove naturally encroaching tree roots that damage the plaintiff’s land.
2. Whether such root encroachment constitutes an actionable nuisance supporting injunctions and damages, or instead leaves the plaintiff limited to self-help by cutting roots at the boundary.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the decree dismissing the bill.
- The court held that naturally spreading roots from a tree located wholly on defendants’ land did not constitute an actionable nuisance, even where the roots clogged pipes and affected the neighbor’s foundation.
- The court denied both injunctive relief and damages.
- The court stated plaintiffs’ remedy was self-help: cutting off the encroaching roots at the property line.

## Legal Principles

- Naturally occurring effects of trees lawfully maintained on one’s own land (including shade, overhanging branches, and underground roots) generally do not create nuisance liability to adjoining landowners.
- Harm from such natural encroachments may be treated as *damnum absque injuria*—actual damage without a legal wrong—so no damages or injunction will lie absent a legally culpable invasion.
- The adjoining landowner’s remedy is self-help: the right to cut back encroaching vegetation (including roots) to the boundary line on the landowner’s own property.

## Conclusion

Massachusetts rejected nuisance-based injunctions and damages for harm caused by naturally encroaching tree roots from a neighbor’s land, limiting the affected landowner to self-help removal of roots up to the boundary.


Michalson v. Nutting, 175 N.E. 490 (Mass. 1931)