Almost two years after a tree service sawed down a towering oak in his yard, a resident's fight for compensation is over.
By BILL COATS
Published August 13, 2004
LUTZ - Mike Conigliaro's lawsuit against his homeowners association, like his 65-foot laurel oak, is dead. But everybody agreed to kill the suit.
Conigliaro said he received $16,000 in compensation for a tree he once estimated could have cost more than $80,000 to replace. The suit was dismissed July 22.
"With everybody holding firm, it would have carried on for a year getting a court date," Conigliaro said. A trial would have run up fees for his attorney and expert witnesses, he said.
He said Independent Tree Service, which removed the oak, paid $12,500; the Crystal Lakes Manors Homeowners Association, which requested the tree removal, paid $1,000; and University Properties, the association's property manager, paid $2,500.
Independent's president, Jerry Upcavage, confirmed the settlement, but would not discuss it.
After University settled last year, its president, James Young, said the settlement "was in the best interests of all parties."
The homeowners association switched to another property manager. Its president, Marc Dudney, said the lawsuit was covered by the association's insurer.
Conigliaro filed the suit 20 months ago after Independent sawed down the oak in May 2002. It had towered 65 feet over a community wall at the back of Conigliaro's yard in Crystal Lakes Manors. Officers in the homeowners association believed the tree's roots were damaging the wall.
But a sequence of communications lapses led to the tree's doom against the wishes of Conigliaro and Hillsborough County, which had denied a permit to cut down the tree.
Upcavage dealt with different board members than Conigliaro did, and Conigliaro was told the condemned tree wasn't on his property. In denying the tree-removal permit, the county notified Conigliaro, but not Upcavage. The homeowners association's president e-mailed the permit news to a staff member at University, who didn't return from vacation in time to tell Upcavage.
Conigliaro, a sergeant with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, said he and his wife were shunned while the suit was pending. They stopped receiving invitations to community events and group e-mails sent by the homeowners association, he said.
But Conigliaro is optimistic that relations are improving. "We have made every effort to correct that situation and include the Conigliaros in everything that's communicated," said Dudney, who was elected the homeowners' president in January.
Meanwhile, the low, broad stump of the laurel oak remains in Conigliaro's back yard, but not for long.
"We're going to have to do something with it now," he said. "We'll have it ground down or removed somehow."
