Devil's Advocate
> Just playing devil's advocate here.
A halfhearted attempt at best.
How about we encourage this guy. Let's say he's performing this "service" for $100. All he's really doing is taking work away from a licensed lowballer who would do the exact same thing: break out the metal detector and shovel, flag up a few pins and leave without checking or verifying anything. And probably for about $150.
The more "property corners" this guy finds, the quicker the licensed jackleg is out of business. Then we go after the unlicensed practice. It's the surveying equivalent of allying with the Bolsheviks to defeat the Nazis.
Now THAT is playing the Devil's Advocate 😉
Except that...
Except that land surveying is a vocation where the practicer sets himself up as having special and advanced knowledge not commonly held by others.
Like other professions, it requires trust by those who would use our services and requires that those practicing are trustworthy. It also requires that those who strive to be trustworthy work to remove those who clearly aren't when discovered.
It's because some are not trustworthy, either as a matter of character or as a matter of competence that we are licensed. When someone proposes to provide professional services ("Here's your property corners" = professional opinion) without having obtained that license, they have shown themselves to be deficient in both competence and in character.
It is the duty of the professional with knowledge of such violation of public trust to report it to the Board.
Maryland survey ad on Craigslist>Semantics Game??
Donald,
Maybe you misunderstood what I was saying. People on this board who don't think that it's land surveying are playing a semantics game. You can call it "locating markers" or whatever you want and it's still land surveying.
What you posted above is exactly right, which is what I was trying to get at.
Maryland survey ad on Craigslist>GLenn
my post wasn't directed at you, I agree with you and I appreciated your post! It was directed at those folks that were defending (or appeared to be defending) the right of someone with a shovel and a metal detector uncovering property corners.
That is NOT what this post is about, it's about a Craig's list ad and they seemed top be ignoring that particular ad in order to put something else forward.
Like you said, "If it looks like surveying......."
Maryland survey ad on Craigslist>GLenn
I am starting to understand why different surveyors set multiple points for the same corner. So those jack-leg nonlicensed guys can't figure out which one is the right one.
It is very unfortunate when some licensed land surveyors posting here apparently see no harm in having anyone practice as a land surveyor as long as they are not "setting" property corners. Your license qualifies you to make decisions that safeguards the public from things they have no expertise in doing themselves. For instance a person practicing as a surveyor finds a piece of scrap iron and the property owner builds an expensive fence on his neighbors property or worse yet builds a structure over the property line or setback limit.
This is why doctors and other professionals are qualified to do what they do. Imagine the result if someone posing as a doctor told someone that they need to keep seeing a chiropractor because of lower back pain, but instead they are actually full of colon cancer.
The democrat gets his/her license, surveys it by him/her-self for free, and makes sure it is in exactly the right place to satisfy all the neighbors. The republican gets his license, charges $5,000, pays a crew minimum wage to dig up the first monument they find, and never visits the job site himself. The independent doesn't need no stinkin' license, advertises on craigs-list, and finds the first monument he can with a locator and charges $50.
But my question is why you didn't post this under politics/religion instead of legal issues. 😉
Maryland survey ad on Craigslist>GLenn
> I am starting to understand why different surveyors set multiple points for the same corner. So those jack-leg nonlicensed guys can't figure out which one is the right one.
I'm starting to understand why surveying isn't looked at as a profession and other "jack-leg" trades are encroaching on our expertise.
Maryland survey ad on Craigslist>GLenn
> my post wasn't directed at you, I agree with you and I appreciated your post! It was directed at those folks that were defending (or appeared to be defending) the right of someone with a shovel and a metal detector uncovering property corners.
>
> That is NOT what this post is about, it's about a Craig's list ad and they seemed top be ignoring that particular ad in order to put something else forward.
>
> Like you said, "If it looks like surveying......."
Gotcha.
Hmm, pay a person 50 bucks to dig up irons indicated on a plat, or pay a surveyor 300 bucks to set another iron .04 away from the buried ones and create a 30 thousand dollar lawsuit? It seems our technicians and the public are on to us?
Sarcasm off.
Duane
> Hmm, pay a person 50 bucks to dig up irons indicated on a plat, or pay a surveyor 300 bucks to set another iron .04 away from the buried ones and create a 30 thousand dollar lawsuit? It seems our technicians and the public are on to us?
>
> Sarcasm off.
In Maryland, the minimum requirement is for 0.12' of discrepancy for a major lawsuit
The title of the ad
Property Line Survey's (Stakeout)
It's illegal in MS as well, and if you don't report it, you are considered to be aiding and abetting.
Duane
Interesting; so the question is: is it still an innocent mistake if you hire your neighbor who owns a metal detector to find the iron pipes that purportedly mark your boundary? And, would any survey have taken place if this had happened? Would the encroachment have been found as soon? I yi yi.
