In Fisher v. Lowe, the plaintiff sued defendant for driving his automobile into plaintiff’s oak tree, damaging the tree. The Michigan trial court ruled in favor of the defendant and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Here is the court’s actual opinion:
We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree’s behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy’s crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court’s decree.
Affirmed.
The court’s opinion prompted the usually staid headnote writers at West Publishing Co. to take their own poetic license. This one’s worth checking out in full.
— Fisher v. Lowe, 333 N.W.2d 67, 67 (Mich. Ct. App. 1983).
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