Exactly! But is the responsibility also a requirement?
I don't intimately know what the engineers in the housing industry are like but in the industry I am in, there are a lot of text book heroes who simply don't understand the bigger picture. Some of these clowns have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of lost time at different times as a result of their abject stupidity and this is a very poignant subject matter with me.
justme15; Just wondering, do you have any photos that show the trees prior to building? If not, then an arborist should be able to give you an approximation as to their age.