Laminar free hyperbolic 3-manifolds

We analyse the existence question for essential laminations in 3-manifolds. The purpose is to prove that there are infinitely many closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds which do not admit essential laminations. This answers in the negative a question posed by Gabai and Oertel. The proof is obtained by analysing certain group actions on trees and showing that certain 3-manifold groups only have trivial actions on trees. In general the trees are neither simplicial nor metric. There are corollaries concerning the existence question for Reebless foliations and pseudo-Anosov flows.