NEWPORT, N.H. — Retired US Navy SEAL commander Michael Hayes walked out of Sullivan Superior Court with an empty ledger and a clear record on October 23 after state prosecutors dropped two felony indictments over a felled boundary hemlock. Hayes, 55, pleaded guilty to a non-criminal trespassing violation and handed over a $1,000 fine at the clerk's counter. The prison threat vanished instantly. The state had previously threatened him with up to seven years behind bars.
A Sullivan County grand jury indicted Hayes on May 27 on charges of criminal mischief and timber-harvesting trespass. The dispute erupted on the shores of Lake Sunapee, where Hayes shared a contested property line with neighbours Stacey Nath-Vinick and Michael Vinick. At the heart of the feud stood a single hemlock tree and an old four-foot stump. In June, Hayes brought in workers to cut the leaning hemlock down, citing fears that the dying trunk would crush nearby property — recalling a 2017 incident documented by Mercedes-Benz where a falling tree crushed his family vehicle. But the timing exploded into conflict: Hayes emailed the Vinicks on June 11 asking to clear the tree, just one day after Michael Vinick's father died. Nath-Vinick told the court she replied that the family was in mourning, yet the crew took the tree down days later.
Arborists immediately waged a battle of ledger sheets. The Vinicks retained Brian Beaty, a consultant certified by the American Society of Consulting Arborists, who rated the hemlock's condition at 53 percent and appraised the replacement cost of the tree and adjacent stump at $11,259. Beaty noted the old stump had anchored a family hammock. Hayes struck back with an assessment from Jeffrey Coombs, president of Ossipee Mountain Land Company. Coombs inspected the boundary photos and concluded the remaining trees were in advanced decay with zero positive commercial timber value. That valuation wedge broke the prosecution's case.
Under New Hampshire law, criminal timber trespass becomes a class B felony only when market loss exceeds $1,000, while felony criminal mischief demands proof of purposeful damage topping $1,500. Defense attorney Jason Casey pushed that distinction directly to County Attorney Christine Hilliard in a July memo, arguing the state conflated expensive residential replacement estimates with actual raw timber market value. Casey insisted Hayes acted under a good-faith belief of necessity. Sunapee municipal regulations explicitly exempt decaying or hazardous trees from permit requirements.
Judge James Kennedy accepted the negotiated plea, converting the bitter property row into a civil violation and extinguishing the felony counts. While New Hampshire law allows property owners to pursue civil claims for up to ten times the commercial value of unlawfully cut timber, no formal civil suit has been docketed against Hayes, ending the lakefront clash at the court clerk's window.