After all is said and done, we go back to Chucksta's title for this thread:
"What's the worst thing you have ever done to an idiot customer?"
If that is the worst thing in a life of work, I'll give you a pass on this one. Hopefully, there was no emergency need to go for medication or drive a stranded love one in need of a lift. I get it, you'd had your fill of the guy. Perhaps he was on a fixed income and the bills were piling up faster than the money would last. Is there such a thing as homeowner's insurance covering this sort of thing?
Unfortunately, homeowner insurance doesn't cover trees dying on your property, even if there's more than 20 of them, dead because of an infestation.. Nor does it cover damage from a tree coming down, that you had not dealt with. A homeowner has a fiducial duty to properly maintain their property. Kinda hard to say that you didn't know it was dead, when it's June... and there isn't a single leaf on it.
The Asian Ash Beetle caused literally Billions of dollars in economic impact in the areas that Ash trees grew.. They all died within a short time of the start of the infestation. But, seriously, the top end of his driveway, would have only needed about a half an hours work ( even with his corded electric), to be able to get out of the driveway.
I'm still not sure... years later, if it was the worst thing, or the best thing. He got what he asked for.. A tree dropped for free. There was no possible way that, when I started cutting, that he wouldn't have known where the tree was coming down. He never said stop.. He never said how about you cut down that one instead.
I figured that it was the worst thing, because I knew it would force him to make a decision. Undoubtedly, he'd probably had other quotes, as evidenced by the crew we later saw, attending to the job.
