‘No right to cut down neighbour’s trees’

A systems engineer had no entitlement to cut down his next-door neighbour’s 50ft-high trees, a judge in the Circuit Civil Court ruled yesterday.

Mr Justice Raymond Groarke said Colin Kilgannon should have followed his legal team and surveyor’s advice to discuss with neighbour Dermot P McArdle where the boundary between their properties lay.

Judge Groarke said it was most regrettable that Mr Kilgannon, of Sans Souci, Kilgobbin Road, Stepaside, Dublin, purposefully chose to ignore that advice and decided to rely only on maps he had, showing that the 50ft-high trees, allegedly causing structural damage to his house, were on his property.