Earlier in February a strange case arose over an obscure California law, the Solar Shade Control Act (.PDF), passed in 1979 after the Oil Crisis. The law essentially made criminals out of a pair of Sunnyvale residents, whose eight redwood trees cast shade on a neighbor’s solar panels.The dispute between the neighbors, Mark Vargas (solar panel owner) and Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett (tree owners) was “settled” when a judge ruled Treanor and Bissett had to cut two of the trees down, despite the fact that