Tree Failures and the Subrogation Opportunity: A Forensic Arborist’s Guide to Recoverable Losses

A Forensic Arborist’s Guide to Recoverable Losses

By Matthew T. Latham, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist (TX-3737B), ASCA Registered Consulting Arborist (RCA #859), ASCA Tree & Plant Appraisal Qualified

Tree failures are one of the most misunderstood categories of property loss in the insurance world. From the outside, a fallen limb or a toppled tree looks like a simple weather event: “It was windy, it broke, end of story (“Act of God”).”

BUT when you zoom out just a bit  – and preferably before someone hauls the evidence to the dump  – these losses often reveal a chain of preventable defects, maintenance errors, or construction impacts that point directly to third-party liability. That’s where subrogation opportunities hide… and where they’re routinely overlooked.

As a forensic consulting arborist, I spend a lot of time explaining that trees rarely fail for a single reason such as a strong wind event. They most often fail due to  WHOLE SERIES of conditions stacked up quietly over months, years, or even decades. Identifying why matters, because the “why” determines whether a recovery pathway exists and helps determine who (or what) is actually to blame!

There’s really 4 main reason or causes that a tree fails – Lets take a look at them all, what they tell us, and how subrogation professionals can spot the signs early enough to act.

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The Big Four: What Actually Causes Tree Failures?

1. Root Plate Failure

When a tree fails at the base, the entire root system rotates or shears — often taking a pancake of soil with it. It looks like an “act of God,” but in many cases, something weakened the structural roots long before the storm rolled in.

Common contributing factors include:

• Past trenching or line installation that severed lateral roots
• Soil compaction from heavy equipment
• Grade changes, especially adding fill soil over the critical root zone
• Prolonged saturation caused by irrigation leaks or drainage mismanagement
• Root decay from ganoderma, inonotus, armillaria, or similar pathogens

These impacts are usually traceable to a party. If a contractor disturbed the root system two years ago, that action may still be the primary causal factor today.

For subrogation pros:
If you see a root plate failure, ask what changed underground in the last 1–10 years. Odds are, quite a bit.

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2. Structural Defects Within the Tree

This bucket includes the failures most people never see coming — because the outside looks healthy. Internal decay, cracks, weak branch unions, and embedded bark often develop slowly and invisibly.

Common causes:

• Improper pruning (lion-tailing, topping, flush cuts)
• Natural defects such as included bark
• Advanced decay from fungi
• Overextended limbs with poor load distribution
• Improper cabling/bracing by unqualified workers

For subrogation pros:
If non-arborists maintained the tree, you should immediately ask how it was maintained. Landscapers with chainsaws can create decades of liability with one afternoon of lion-tail pruning.

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3. Construction Damage: The Silent Killer of Trees

Ninety percent of tree damage during construction is underground, invisible, and completely preventable.
Trenching, grading, foundation installation, compaction, or even re-routing walkways can kill a tree slowly from the bottom up.

Construction damage failures often occur 5–15 years after the project.

Red flags:

• The tree leans away from a recent construction area
• The canopy is thinning or chlorotic
• The root flare is buried
• The failure occurred on the side closest to the construction activity

For subrogation pros:
Request site history. Even a small patio installation or pool trench can create liability years down the line.

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4. Improper Maintenance and Negligent Tree Care

This is the category that subrogation professionals consistently underestimate.
A huge percentage of failures are directly connected to:

• Over-pruning
• Removing large structural limbs
• Topping
• Girdling roots created by planting errors
• Failure to treat known decay or defects
• Ignoring professional recommendations
• Hiring unqualified workers

If the tree owner (or their contractor) created or worsened a defect, that is a potential recovery opportunity.

For subrogation pros:
If “the lawn guys” did the pruning, get photos and invoices. You may find your liability source right there.

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How Subrogation Professionals Can Identify Liability Early

Tree failures don’t happen in a vacuum. The difference between a dead-end weather claim and a recoverable loss often comes down to what the adjuster captures in the first 24–48 hours and how fast a forensic arborist is looped in. Evidence disappears quickly in tree cases, and most of the liability clues are subtle: the angle of the break, the condition of the root plate, pruning history, construction records, fungal indicators, and defects that aren’t obvious to the untrained eye. When subrogation professionals know what to look for, they dramatically increase the odds of identifying a party who contributed to the failure long before the storm ever hit.

One of the biggest challenges is that cleanup crews, landscapers, and property owners often remove the critical evidence before anyone realizes the significance. Even basic documentation can make or break a subrogation claim. This is why early, deliberate evidence preservation is essential.

Key evidence to capture immediately includes:

Preserving even a few of these elements gives a forensic arborist the ability to reconstruct the failure and determine whether it was preventable.

Subrogation professionals can also strengthen recovery potential by asking targeted questions early. Most liability issues reveal themselves through site history rather than what the tree looked like on the day it fell. These questions uncover the silent contributors: construction damage, improper pruning, drainage changes, and ignored defects.

Critical early questions to ask include:

• Has the tree been pruned within the last five years, and by whom?
• Were there any construction, trenching, utilities, grading, or landscaping projects near the tree?
• Have there been drainage issues, prolonged saturation, or irrigation changes?
• Did anyone notice decline, dieback, leaning, or fungus prior to the failure?
• Does the homeowner or neighbor have pre-failure photos of the tree?

These answers often reveal a third party whose actions undermined the tree’s structural integrity.

Finally, early involvement of a qualified consulting arborist is the most effective way to convert a suspicious failure into a defensible subrogation claim. Arborists bring the ability to identify industry-standard violations, improper maintenance, construction injury, and decay indicators that directly tie liability to a person or company.

A consulting arborist can help determine:

• Whether contractors severed structural roots or altered grade
• Whether improper pruning (topping, lion-tailing, over-reduction) destabilized the tree
• Whether maintenance providers ignored obvious defects
• Whether development or utility work created long-term decline
• Whether the failure mechanism was predictable and preventable

The subrogation takeaway is simple: the earlier you document, the earlier you ask the right questions, and the earlier you involve an arborist, the more likely you are to turn a fallen tree into a meaningful recovery.

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About the Author

Matthew T. Latham, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist (TX-3737B), ASCA Registered Consulting Arborist (RCA #859), and ASCA Tree & Plant Appraisal Qualified, specializes in forensic tree analysis, expert witness work, and insurance consulting. He is the founder of Arborist On Demand, a national consulting firm focused on tree risk, construction impact, and litigation support.