California Surveyors Forums

Call me a Surveying Dinosaur but it seems that many Land Surveyors have lost there way as far as what being a Land Surveyor in fact is. Technology as well as pressures from Employers has caused a lot of this and I have had my fair share of disputes with over twenty years of Top Management with various Firms before Retirement about doing Boundary Surveys correctly. To many Land Surveyors seem to be studying Legal law rather then Surveying Law with regards to doing what they are hired to do. What court cases have determined in the past has nothing to do with the duties of a Land Surveyor on any Boundary Survey that He or She is doing at the time. A Professional Land Surveyor does one thing only and that is specifically survey the deed or description of the property that He or She is hired to Survey. Adjoining property descriptions, monuments and lines of occupation are only supplemental items, unless called for in your specific description of the property you are surveying. If your description is one of the lots in a tract of land, then yes, you must establish the Tract of land in order to establish your lot that you are surveying. If your description is a tract of land that does not call for an adjoiner’s lines and an adjoiner’s property has been surveyed and monumented, calling to your lines, this does not establish your tract of land. You must establish your tract of land from its origin. You are not surveying the adjoiner’s deed but your tract of land deed. Another thing is that a re-survey is just that and not the original. It does not matter how many Surveyors have excepted a line, even if it was re-surveyed years ago by a Private Surveyor, a County Surveyor or by Government Surveyors a year after the Original Survey, it is still a re-survey and holds no more weight then your survey. A Professional Land Boundary Surveyor establishes lines based on evidence only that in court, He or She can represent without any other conclusion to the position in their own mind. The Land Surveyor in court is a Professional Witness to evidence only and although Neutral to ownership, the Survey will always favor one property owner over another. This is not your concern, nor is it your concern to make a County Surveyor or Government Surveyor happy by illegally fixing lines with overlaps and gaps. Surveyors do not re-establish “Property Lines”; they conclude lines based on evidence only for the courts to make decisions on “Property Line” locations. “Property Line” decisions by the courts only hold true until other evidence found by a Land Surveyor concludes a position of the original line position. Land Surveyors should discuss differences in boundary line locations but a Land Surveyor should never compromise on a line with any number of Surveyors or the courts for that matter. You are to survey your deed description irregardless of a court ordered survey to resolve disputed lines involving your survey. If quit claims were written between all owners from one to the other of any areas exceeding the original boundaries, including your description, only then would the court survey fix your lines. In court you will find that most Attorneys do not know very much if anything about Land Surveying. They seem to look at two items. One is, “where will the court most likely establish the line, if your evidence does not hold true in the eyes of the court. The second thing is that they seem to do is read Surveying books specifically on Surveying laws and how they can show you to be incompetent. Although you are Neutral, one of the Attorneys will be representing the landowner that is on the losing end. I have found that they will try everything possible to make you quote law. They will ask you if your line is the “Property Line”? Never state that a line you establish is the “Property line”. Your answer, no matter how many times asked should be, “From the evidence found by research and in the field, this is where I concluded the line to be”. Stating “Property Line” is quoting law and once you have made one statement of law, you will be hammered over and over by the Attorney using reference to Land Surveying books on Surveying Laws that your work is incompetent. If the court orders another Surveyor to survey the line and He or She finds evidence that you were not aware of or did not find, and you would agree with their position, then state so. It would be incompetent on your part to not state so but you should qualify this with the statement that given this new evidence you would agree with this position but only by testing the validity of the evidence shown by the other Surveyor. A Professional Land Surveyor should survey His or Her description regardless of what other retracements have been done and to prove to themselves the position of the best conclusion of original lines. Doing this, there is no reason to ever fear going to court as you have done your job correctly and to the best of your ability based on all evidence you yourself have tested and verified. No Land Surveying License has a higher status then anyone else’s, no matter what Private or Government Organization they belong to. One thing I have leaned over the years in reading highly regarded surveying books is that one page contradicts the next. The thing is, these are no contradictions on an actual surveys, only correct interpretation and gathering of all evidence for the courts to make the best decision possible from your conclusions. I mean no insult to any Land Surveyor as I hold the Highest Respect for all of them. It just seems that over the years there is more concern with interpreting legal law, then interpreting deeds.

S. Davis Retired LS 4968

I have a issue with you. Your number is 10 from mine and you are retired and I am not. That's not fair. LOL

Interesting read if I can get past the first paragraph.

bruce hall wrote:Interesting read if I can get past the first paragraph.

LOL.

Yes, it would help to break that up into paragraphs.

Land Surveyors survey boundary lines between adjoining parcels of land. Boundary lines are 100% a man-made invention of the law. It is impossible to Survey a boundary line without reference to the law which created it. Land Surveyors are the only professionals qualified and licensed to survey boundaries so if we can't or won't do it, who will? If you are surveying some line without reference to the law then it may be a line but it isn't a boundary line.

Every type of parcel has original corners. Chapter 3 is to be applied ONCE to subdivide the section; once the Section is subdivided it is not appropriate or proper to keep doing it over and over again.

I could go on and on but won't.

Yes, I do agree that it should be broken into paragraphs for easier reading. I also was covering several topics of what a Surveyor should be involved with. I was lucky to start with a very small Firm that did one boundary survey after another in rural areas of Public Land Surveys and parcels created by deed alone. Many were in Mountain areas, farmland and Old tracts in Older towns. Many of these areas, other Surveyors would not even touch because prior surveys revealed such large difference from the original mapping or deeds that had to be resolved by extensive field work and research. My Employer was of course budget minded and we made back and forth profit and loss. I have to have a Great Respect for Him as the most important thing was that the survey be the very best that we can do and represent it in court without hesitation and this was above all else.

When speaking about not following Court ordered surveys, that is because I have been there and found evidence to dispute the Courts survey and thus filed the map accordingly as my job was to survey the original deed to the property.

When speaking of the Government Surveyors, I have had a County Surveyor call in Government Surveyors to survey what I have established for a section line because it created acres of encroachment fromm what had been excepted for decades. I found evidence to the original section line which my deed was calling to so I established it accordingly. The original line was established around 1856 and a Government re-survey of the line was done about 10 years later which established the line in the position that had been excepted since. The Government surveyors after going out into the field and reviewing the original data, agreed that they would have to do the same as I did to establish the section line.

So the Statement in short is: Always, survey your deed description, not others work, other then the original surveyor.

As far as early retirement, it is not what it is cracked up to be. It is something that most look forward to but as you drive down the road, you seem to see every patch in the centerline of the roads, flagging knots on fence wire at 70 miles an hour and every last stake in the ground. Enjoy it while you can.

S. Davis LS 4968

Mr. Davis-

Nothing wrong with that.

"A man oughta do what he thinks is right." -Hondo Lane (Hondo 1954).

Dave Karoly, PLS wrote:Land Surveyors survey boundary lines between adjoining parcels of land. Boundary lines are 100% a man-made invention of the law. It is impossible to Survey a boundary line without reference to the law which created it. Land Surveyors are the only professionals qualified and licensed to survey boundaries so if we can't or won't do it, who will? If you are surveying some line without reference to the law then it may be a line but it isn't a boundary line.

Every type of parcel has original corners. Chapter 3 is to be applied ONCE to subdivide the section; once the Section is subdivided it is not appropriate or proper to keep doing it over and over again.

I could go on and on but won't.

My statement is not that you do not use Surveying law to establish a Boundary line but that you do not make statements in court that can be used against you as being statements of law that only the court can decide. The Attorney asks you if this is the Property line? Your answer is not stating that it is not, you are only stating that based on evidence, this is where you determined the line to be. In court, an Attorney can sway a jury very easily by convincing them that you are making statements that you are not qualified to make.

Of course we as Land Surveyors know that we are surveying land boundaries but in court, you are just a Professional Witness to the evidence to the court concerning all that you have found to make your conclusion. Your conclusion does not set an original Property Line, nor does the line you set in the field.

I am also not talking about re-subdividing a Government section, but I am talking about verifying the that the survey is valid by test. I will not accept any survey, unless I have re-traced it to be as it is shown or close to. I dug up every monument and verified that it was in fact what was called for and even existed as I found straggles over holes shown on numerous maps, including recent ones, calling for monuments that did not exist.

It is the decision of each Land Surveyor if they are going to just except things as being correct or test them. That is your decision but I fear nothing that I have done to go to court. What I mean by reading to much into law is that you should not make a decision based on what a previous court judgment was. Your Survey, like all Survey are unique and your only job is to gather evidence for the court that shows how you arrived at your conclusion of the line. All I can say is test it in court, I have.

S. Davis Retired LS 4968

Thank you for this post Mr. Davis.

As Mr. Davis points out . . . we are charged with placing on the ground what is written in the record. Extraneous evidence is part of the puzzle.

Thanks for the wonderful post & replys!

Phil-Sonoma

I would say we are charged with putting the written record on the ground unless it is already on the ground, in that case we are charged with finding it.

This rule is not limited to original section corners and subdivisions.

Dave Karoly, PLS wrote:I would say we are charged with putting the written record on the ground unless it is already on the ground, in that case we are charged with finding it.

This rule is not limited to original section corners and subdivisions.

You are correct. It applies to every boundary survey we do, even if it is nothing more difficult than a well monumented vacant lot.