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On December 18, 2024, a tree fell on a box truck on Highway U.S. 2 (also known as State Route 2) near the Spokane Airport exit. In the blink of an eye, it killed the two occupants. WSP photos of the tree show it was obviously dead, and obviously tall enough to fall into the roadway. The airport clocked the wind around that time at 28 miles per hour – not particularly strong, but strong enough to topple the deadly tree.
Government’s Duty to Keep Roads Safe
The Washington State Department of Transportation has a duty to keep our highways “reasonably safe for ordinary travel”. That duty applies both to our interstate freeways and state highways. Similarly, counties have such a duty for county roads, and municipalities do for their roads.
Because we are fortunate to live in the Evergreen State, state policy rightly encourages the promotion and retention of healthy trees. They beautify the roadway and provide important environmental benefits. And because there are millions of them, governments are not legally required to identify every potentially hazardous tree. But those benefits need to be balanced against road safety. Under Washington law, governments must work to detect and remove hazardous trees. The duty exists where the hazard has been reasonably detectable long enough to allow the government or private landowner time to detect the hazard, to direct traffic away from the hazard and remove the tree. That duty is highest on heavily traveled roads, such as Highway 2. Private landowners whose trees may reach roadways have a similar legal duty of care to remove hazards to the traveling public, and are usually in even better position to monitor their trees.
Balancing Tree Preservation and Road Safety
WSDOT conducts video surveys of our state roads, is supposed to watch for hazards while maintaining roadways (such as paving and mowing), and even deploys so-called “hazard tree patrols” to take down and inspect for dangerous trees. Unfortunately, those surveys and patrols are often just “drive-bys”. Even where a hazardous condition that suggests a potential hazard, or an actual hazardous tree, is detected, the government sometimes does not conduct a closer inspection of the trees in the surrounding area that may indicate a wider problem, such as a spreading disease or soggy ground conditions. Or they simply wait too long to act responsibly. Trees that should have been discovered and should have been removed because they are dead, rotted, or within the so-called “clear zone” of the roadway, are left to threaten, and too often maim or kill the traveling public.
Cases of Government Negligence Involving Dangerous Trees
Our firm has recovered numerous significant recoveries on behalf of the victims of government negligence in failing to remove dangerous trees. One such case involved an entire family devastated by a tree that crushed their SUV when the state failed to close U.S. 2 near Stevens Pass after a major winter storm, despite the fact that trees heavy with snow burden had been falling all over the area, blocking roads and snapping power lines for days. Another involved a woman severely injured by a giant Douglas fir that fell in rush-hour traffic on I-90 in Bellevue. Our investigation showed the state had ignored about fifty other dangerous firs compromised by root rot in that area, which the state did not remove until after we sued. Years ago, I recovered a settlement on behalf of a man driving to work, who was seriously injured and nearly killed by a roadside tree on a county road that had been obviously chewed nearly through by a beaver at least three years beforehand. That tree stood in that visibly dangerous condition through well over a hundred close passes by the roadside maintenance crew.
We encourage our governments and private landowners to do a more conscientious job of preventing these unnecessary tragedies. The alternative is to force them to be accountable in court to compensate the sudden victims of their ongoing negligence.
