Larry Ellison Sues Neighbor Over Redwoods Blocking His San Francisco Bay View

Larry Ellison Sues Neighbor Over Redwoods Blocking His San Francisco Bay View: "

Larry Ellison has a house in Pacific Heights in San Francisco that he bought in 1988 for $3.9 million. It's a huge house--10,000+ square feet--with sweeping views of the Bay.

At least it used to have sweeping views of the Bay.

Until some redwoods in the back yard of a neighbor's house grew so tall that they started blocking the view.

The neighbor's house in question, Jim Carlton of the Wall Street Journal reports, was bought by Bernard and Jane Von Bothmer in 2004, for $6.9 million.

Larry Ellison's lawyers said he had a agreement with the prior owner that the owner would keep the trees trimmed. The prior owner denies this.

Larry Ellison has since offered to buy the Von Bothmer's house for $15 million. They've turned him down.

The Von Bothmers have several times found limbs from their trees on the ground in their yard, after being unceremoniously sawed-off. Once, Mrs. Bothmer caught three lumberjacks in one of her trees preparing to 'top it.' Larry Ellison denied telling the lumberjacks to do that and said he would have fired them if he had known.

And now Larry Ellison has hired an attorney who specializes in neighbor's-trees-blocking-your-view litigation and sued the Von Bothmers to force them to cut down the trees. In connection with this litigation, he has already submitted a 207-page deposition, in which he revealed that, when a neighbor complained about redwoods on his property in the Valley blocking her view, he chopped them down.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Von Bothmer is attempting to have one of the trees that Larry wants whacked, an acacia, declared a 'Landmark Tree' by the city of San Francisco.

Stay tuned...

Read Jim Carlton's full story in the Wall Street Journal >

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