California Surveyors Forums

A record of survey is not required of any survey:

(d) When the survey is a retracement of lines shown on a subdivision map, official map, or a record of survey, where no material discrepancies with those records are found and sufficient monumentation is found to establish the precise location of property corners thereon, provided that a corner record is filed for any property corners which are set or reset or found to be of a different character than indicated by prior records. For purposes of this subdivision, a "material discrepancy" is limited to a material discrepancy in the position of points or lines, or in dimensions.

My question is this:

I have a potential client who is asking me to monument his property. One of the adjoiners is a parcel map done in 2006 and on the adjoiners parcel map my potential client's land is defined. When I read exception (d) above I can say that my client's land is shown on the parcel map, but it wasn't the purpose of the parcel map to define my clients land. Obviously, my clients legal description makes no mention of the parcel map, but by virture of the parcel map my clients land is described. Assume that there are no material discrepancies and I agree with the solution posed by the parcel map.

My question is if I monument the clients land, and it agrees with the parcel map, do I need to file a ROS or can I file a CR? I guess the overall question is, can you file a CR when you monument land that shows up on a record map, but wasn't the purpose in filing the record map? Hope this makes sense. My purpose in asking this question isn't to avoid filing, but to achieve value for my potential client. From the looks of the parcel map it appears that the preparer of the map performed a very good survey and from the looks of everything I agree with the delineation of my client's land on the parcel map. It would seem that a CR would be adequate, but possibly a ROS is required?

Is there any statement on the PM that your client's boundary was fully determined incidental to the survey of the property of the PM?

If the surveyor of the PM didn't purport to determine the boundaries of your client's property, I'd say that §8765(d) does not apply and that an RS is required.

The intent of that law is that the boundary had been determined and shown so on a duly recorded in a map within the public records. If this property is shown incidental to the property divided via the PM, but no definite intention existed to fully determine the boundary, only half of the intent of §8765(d) has been met.

Just my opinion.

No, there definitely wasn't any intent to determine the boundaries of my clients parcel with the PM, but by virtue of the PM the boundaries were defined.

I've done two or three where my client's parcel was shown as "Not a Part" and the County Surveyor let me do a Corner Record.

But. it was fully dimensioned on the recorded map.

I would think that the responses from Evan and Dave pretty much sum it up.

Alameda County

Whenever I have to question if it should be a CR vs a RS, I have the RS. When it is gray, error to side of caution. You will sleep better in the long run.

Please remember the difference of purpose between Corner Records and Records of Survey. A CR is intended to be a record of a corner (hence the name), not a miniature Record of Survey. If you're just replacing a corner from a Parcel Map, then replace it and file a CR. If you're surveying an un-mapped parcel and determining the positions of those points and lines described in the deed (whether or not they happen to coincide with a Parcel Map corner) then file a Record of Survey (whether or not you set any monuments).

I chose the Record of Survey option based upon Evan's comment that since the preparer of the parcel map did not intend to resolve the boundaries of the subject parcel that a ROS would be a better option. Thanks for the imput!!

So, Darth, by your reading of the law, if the lines show up on a recorded map, it doesn't matter if the lines represent resolved boundaries or if they are even dimensioned, that counts and meets the letter of the law. Is that correct?

If that's so, then yes, I will continue to lose work to those who will cut corners by doing the absolute minimum that they feel they can get away with and providing unsuspecting clients with something less than they should get.

Part of reading the law is going beyond the letter of the law and discerning the intent of the law. I'm pretty sure that I do a fairly decent job of doing that, and if BPELS or the AG ever were to issue an opinion on the question, I'd be willing to bet my take on it would be pretty close.

There will always be those who are willing to cut corners to provide a cheaper service or product (and I mean that in every sense of the word). For those clients who shop purely on price, I have little chance to gain their business from the corner cutters.

Clients who are open to being educated on quality of service are those I would rather have anyway. You can keep the blue light shoppers.

Orange County actually has a Monument Record. They have horizontal and vertical control over a 1/2 mile grid of pretty much the entire county. The horizontal points were originally tied out with their Monument Record, which is basically the same as a CR. They use CR's to do re-ties now if they need to.

Darth, you need to go speak to the dark side on this one. Evan is on the right track in my interpretation as well. Not to mention Evan got support from Ric (aka BPELS), so he might be correct.

I also interpret Section 8765.(d) to read it to say, "the survey is a retracement of lines shown on . . . " .

The adjoining lines are not part of the subdivision, but rather only adjoining informational lines, not part of the subdivision. The retracement is the key word. Your retracing the footsteps of that survey.

Oh, and if you don't see my reasoning, . . . go ask Luke, or Chewbaca, heheheee.

Exactly the right word to key in on, Keith. If you are merely retracing the ties shown to monuments which are distant from the surveyed boundary of the other map, then by all means, go ahead and file a CR.

But when have you ever been hired by a landowner to show him how his corner monument(s) relate to some distant property.

Without understanding the potential difference between these monument positions and his actual corner positions, this may seem like the same thing to most clients. But we all know that there can be, and occassionally are differences between monuments that a landowner may believe to properly mark his corners, and the actual corner locations.

What the client really wants is to have the actual lines and corners marked, to have the boundary resolved (retraced). If you are retracing the boundary, and its resolution is not depicted or claimed on another record map, then it's your responsibility to record a map.


As to the question of if I have ever been wrong.... Hmmm... It happens so rarely, and I don't make a point of remembering such things (why clutter my mind with wrong info once I have the right info), so I'll have to get back to you on that one if I ever recall such a time.

Edit: I got it! I was apparently wrong the other day when I took Dane's CAD case post with the exclamation marks to mean that he was upset at something I posted. But I accepted his explanation that it was simply a matter of forgetting caps lock, so I'm no longer wrong about that either.

PE PLS,

Can you post the Parcel Map you are referring to?

Sorry, I can't post the parcel map because I only have it in a full size hardcopy and I don't have a scanner. For some reason I couldn't get a digital copy of the map online. For what its worth, I didn't get the job....