The Court may grand mandatory injunction for compelling an adjoining owner to remove the encroachment of his or her tree or bush.

In Tanner v. Wallbrunn, 77 Mo. App. 262 (Mo. Ct. App. 1898), the Court ruled that trees whose branches overhang the land of another will not be considered as nuisances except to the extent which the branches overhang the adjoining land.  The landowner has the right to cut off the overhanging branches.  However, he or she is not entitled to a mandatory injunction to remove the trees, since such equity power can be successfully invoked only in a strong case of necessity.  In deciding the case, the Court also opined that equity will not interfere where the injury or private nuisance is merely nominal or uncertain.  A mandatory injunction will not lie to remove a tree on the ground that the roots extend into the plaintiff’s soil without a real injury is shown.

The court affirmed that the powerful aid of a court of equity by injunction can be successfully invoked only in a strong and mischievous case of pressing necessity and there must be satisfactory proof of real substantial damage.

In Murphy v. Sigalos, 8 Misc. 2d 633 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1957), the defendant was constructing a garage by encroaching upon the defendant’s way interfering her easement right.  The court found that plaintiff lost her dominant tenement in the premises that the defendant occupied by building the garage through adverse possession.  By her acts, the plaintiff evinced an intention to surrender it.  The petition was dismissed by the Court.