I recently had a boundary survey done for my home in the Atlanta suburbs. The surveyor introduced himself at my front door at 8:00, I explained that there were no gates or anything to worry about, and asked if he needed anything. He said he was good to go, and I told him to ring the doorbell if he needed anything - I work from home and my wife is a SAHM, so we'd be readily available the entire time he was there.
Around 11:00, I came out to my driveway to take my daughter to an appointment. There were branches all over the ground! From our prized pawpaw tree, that we bought 9 years ago and only just started to bear fruit last year - it had been absolutely hacked up, with every branch below 6 feet cut off, and gashes in the trunk. Distraught, I ran in and told my wife, who immediately turned to our Ring camera that oversees the driveway. Much to our surprise, all of 15 minutes prior there was clear footage of the surveyor taking a literal machete to the pawpaw, the pecan behind it, and the pecan on the other side of that section of yard. After immediately calling our GC, who had brought the surveyors out, the man was given a cease and desist on anything tree-related; he stayed on the property for several more hours to complete the survey, and did no further tree damage; unfortunately, by the time we had caught him, he had also taken the top 5+ feet off of the main trunk of our multi-graft peach (as well as an entire graft off of the base), hacked a big branch off of a crepe myrtle, and taken big branches off of a climbing rose on our fence. The pawpaw and the multi-graft peach are likely dead at this point, certainly permanently disfigured.
The company agreed over the phone to pay for the damage to the trees. Several weeks later, I finally have a writeup from my regular arborist for a bit over $4,000 worth of damages. My wife and daughter have been very distraught about the damage, and my wife thinks that sum is low, given how long we've been growing the trees and how malicious/careless the surveyor was in cutting them (we've spoken to multiple folks in the trades and they've never heard of such a thing in decades of experience). I know Georgia tree law is relatively weak compared to other states - but do we have any sort of a leg to stand on that would bring that figure up? Would an increase be substantial, or marginal?