Getting sued over a property line dispute

[April Jensen]

We have gotten into a civil dispute with the neighbors!! We need some advice.

Our house was purchased in May and we are still renovating as a duplex conversion. Next to our house were 50 year old arborvitae trees that were noted in the inspection report as a hazard because of how close they were to the house. We told the neighbors we going to cut them down because they were actually lifting the side walk and touching the side of the house. We knew they were very close to the property line. They paid for a survey (never communicating to us after the survey was complete) and the property line appeared that the trees were on our side (come to find out the markers were off set by 5 feet, which we didn’t know). So we cut all 30 trees down. Obviously they were very upset and then Last week, they gave us a letter from their lawyer asking for $20,000 or they are going to sue since we “willfully committed negligent and intentional torts”

Since that time, we have gotten a new survey and 99.5% of the trees are on our property but the trunks of 3 of the trees does go over the property line a bit (by 10-30%). We also had a neighbor write us a letter on our behalf saying they were here when the trees were planted and the original trees were planted on our property.

We don’t want to pay a lawyer $$$ but we also don’t want to have to go to court at all. What should we do!!