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Client Doesn't Like Result of Survey, Withholds Payment, Threatens Complaints
Long post coming, buckle up or bail out now!
I have a challenging client and am looking for advice how to best navigate. At first contact, she requested a survey on her 100’x200′ city lot because she was in dispute with the location of the boundary between her and her neighbor, a family member. Both had lived in the homes for decades. My gut (correctly) sensed trouble, so I quoted a high fee that I thought would send her away, and requested a 50% deposit. To my surprise she accepted and paid the deposit promptly.
Skipping to now; my gut was right, survey was a nightmare. Bad record, lousy maps, bad deed misclosures. Field survey finds plenty of monuments, occupation following them, but it’s a struggle to make them work with 1930’s block map. The map is half illegible and has several inconsistencies.
At the location of one corner in particular, that which would mark the north end of the line in dispute, I find a very large metal scrap and trash pile. Tires, discarded metal, stack of old bricks, uncoiled barbed wire, and once I got through that, I found that sheets of tin roof had been laid flat on the ground and subsequently hidden under layers of leaves and dirt. I spent at nearly 2 hours in this corner, the search was challenging.
In all the ruckus, my client’s neighbor came out. I ask him: “Do you know where any of your boundary corners are?” and “Where do you think your boundary line is and why?”. He says he remembered there being “a stob” in the pile, and that he always thought the line went right down the wall of his shed. I had indeed found a pipe in the pile, it was hard to distinguish from the rest of the garbage, it was stuck firm in the ground, though it was leaning pretty severely.
When I finally have all the evidence and record I think I’m going to get, I render my resolution. I ultimately hold the pipe in the scrap pile, as I found it’s location to be well within tolerance when measuring from the numerous other monuments. Drawing the line up to the south found pipe, distance checks near perfect, and it follows right along the outside edge of the shed as the adjoiner believed
Now the problem. My client strongly disagrees with my determination. She believe the line to be 10 or feet further into her neighbor, bisecting the mentioned shed instead of skirting right outside. She was absolutely livid that I even spoke to her neighbor, much less even considered anything he had to say.
“I am paying you to survey my line, not his. Why are you talking to him?”
“Of course he’s going to tell you his shed’s on his property, that’s where he wants it to be”
“You said yourself there was a bunch of scrap metal, how do you know he didn’t put that pipe where he wanted it”.
“You are the surveyor, you tell him where the boundary line is, not the other way around”
I give the usual rebuttals:
“I’m not an attorney, I can’t fight for the outcome you want, I look for the truth and render an opinion I believe is based in fact”
“Your neighbors statement did not determine the boundary, it was just another piece of the evidence, I considered it the same as your own statement”
“The line between you and your neighbor is the same line, there is no ‘your’ line and ‘his’ line”
Given her strongly held opinion, I took another deep dive to see if I could find anything that gave credibility to her claim. Given the issues with the record maps, it is conceivable that an alternate resolution could possibly put the line where she believes it to be. For a gut check, I reexamined all the records, with a purposeful bias to conform the boundary to her belief. I returned to the field to look for evidence I may have missed. After that effort, I found nothing that support her assertion. Occupation, monumentation, every single piece evidence except for her statement and the ambiguity of the record maps in my opinion could possibly lead to a resolution the way she was expecting. Even if there was, if the boundary was set the way she’d like it, on the side opposite in conflict her own shed and carports would be well outside. Covering all bases, I added a note to the map, summarizing her statement and my own statement as to why my judgement place the boundary line somewhere else
In multiple phone calls, I’ve held firm to my opinion on the survey, and offered multiple times to come to her house and walk her through the decision making. Confusing her perspective is that the conflicted line doesn’t run perpendicular to the road, nor do the homes and shed sit parallel to the boundary line. She said every person who looks at that line can tell you that it’s wrong. from her view because it doesn’t go where it feels natural with respect to the structures.
I put the screws down today saying that I have met the obligations of my state standards, and those of our contract, and I would like the balance of the invoice paid. I offer to come again to her home to talk through the map. She makes it clear that she won’t be paying unless I “fix the wrong line” and “do this job right”. She began to question my eyesight, and wondered if perhaps it was too cloudy the day I did the survey, maybe I just couldn’t see. I offer to come by one more time to discuss and collect payment, at which point she says “We either work this out, or I’ll be calling the Better Business Bureau”. I’m not interested in hearing threats, so I end the call without a resolution.
The way I see it, there is nothing I can say that’s going to change her mind. Her conclusion is that my survey is incorrect, I have made a mistake, it is wrong. She is not going to accept my survey, or pay her balance willingly.
Option 1
Demand payment, attempt to explain the map again.
Option 2
Let her off for the balance owed, advise our business is complete.
Either way I am expecting a complaint to be followed to the BBB, and she may also discover she can file a complaint to my state board. Advice?
- This discussion was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by tfdoubleyou.
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