Between releasing a new Smashing Pumpkins album and finally opening the Chicago tea house of his dreams, 2012 was shaping up to be a pretty great year for Billy Corgan — but apparently a tree had to go and ruin everything.
The fateful wood in question once stood on Corgan’s Beverly Hills property, until a major 2011 storm uprooted it and sent it crashing into the home of his neighbors, ‘Grey’s Anatomy‘ star Eric Dane and his wife Rebecca Gayheart.

TMZ reports that Dane and Gayheart — who was nine months pregnant at the time — were faced with the tricky situation of attempting to evacuate a “quickly flooding” home that had a tree and broken power lines poking through the roof.

As you might imagine, the Dane-Gayhearts are a little miffed; in fact, they’re claiming that Corgan was warned that the tree posed a threat, and they’re suing him to the tune of unspecified damages for “nuisance, negligence, and injunctive relief.”

For his part, Corgan insists the whole thing is a misunderstanding, telling TMZ that “I was horrified when I learned about the tree falling during what was a massive storm, a storm with winds strong enough to uproot a 50 foot tree by its base! Thankfully no one was injured.”

Corgan went on to call the lawsuit “a shame” and referred to his legal assailants as “nice people.”

-loudwire.com