In May, 2019, while driving his car in West Milford, a tree fell on Plaintiff Mark Solaro’s car, injuring him. The tree in question stood next to a power line owned and operated by Defendants Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) and FirstEnergy Corp. (FirstEnergy) in a nature preserve in a public park. Solaro sued JCP&L and FirstEnergy, claiming they were negligent in failing to inspect, maintain, and manage the trees surrounding their power line. The issue in the unpublished case Solaro v. FirstEnergy Corp., 2026 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1649 (App. Div. July 20, 2026) was whether JCP&L and FirstEnergy owed Solaro a duty of care to manage trees near power lines for the safety of passing vehicles.
The power company defendants, relying on prior New Jersey case law, each filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that while they did have a duty to maintain trees to prevent interruptions in service, that duty did not extend to maintaining trees for passing vehicles unrelated to any interruptions to the transmission of electricity through those lines. Solaro opposed these motions. Despite agreeing that even though the power line itself did not cause his injury, the line only sat next to the tree that fell on his car, he argued that recent vegetation-management regulations that applied to electricity companies like JCP&L and FirstEnergy took precedence over the case law. Those regulations, he argued, required power companies like JCP&L and FirstEnergy to maintain trees near power lines to prevent non-electrical hazards, including those that pose a risk of falling on passing vehicles. The trial court was unpersuaded by Solaro and granted both motions for summary judgment. Solaro appealed.
On appeal, Solaro repeated his argument. He claimed that because the State passed the regulations after the binding case law, they created a new, broader public safety duty on power companies that requires them to maintain trees near power lines regardless of the potential harm, thereby limiting the scope of the case law. The Appellate Division took the same view as the trial court and determined Solaro’s reading of the regulations and the law was in error. The Court held that the prior law that refused to place a duty on utility companies to protect drivers from non-electrical tree hazards remained the guiding principle, and the regulations did not broaden that duty – the regulations were focused on electrical reliability and safety (such as preventing trees from interacting with “energized conductors,” not roadside safety. Further, relying on the plain language of the statutory regulations, including their definitions of words such as “vegetation management,” “hazard tree,” and “mitigate,” the Court held the State intended to protect the electrical grid, not third parties such as drivers on the state’s roads. Ultimately, the Court held that it would be an overwhelming burden on a private entity such as JCP&L or First Energy to inspect and maintain trees over hundreds of miles of roadway for the broad purpose of the safety of passing motorists when that responsibility, more or less, already lies on private or public landowners and the Department of Transportation.
From this decision, beyond the clear pronouncement that a power company’s duty to maintain trees is tied to its role in delivering electricity, not general premises liability, the key takeaway is that general premises liability law controls and landowners, not utilities, are responsible for tree maintenance outside of some electrical malfunction. Further, and more deeply tied to the process of the Court’s reasoning in reading the statutory language deeply, the application of statutory regulations to tort law requires a need to show that the text and structure of the regulation, not the general use of safety-coded language, actually intends to apply to the class of plaintiff and harm at issue; as was the case here where drivers on the state’s roads and non-electrical tree-fall injuries fell outside of the purpose for the regulations.
