I am reading some Texas case law looking to justify my method for reconstructing the boundary of a double section of land in a system of surveys. One phrase I have run across several time is "open prairie line". I have referenced Black's Law Dictionary and done some light google searching and I'm not really finding a hard definition for the term.?ÿ
I take that it means a boundary line of a survey or system of surveys not monumented on the ground but established from existing, controlling monumentation from the same survey or system of surveys at some point distant.
Does that sound about right or can someone cite or link to a firm definition?
Did you find these two references:
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4164213/kerr-v-state/
"The call for a marked line will ordinarily control the call for course and distance; for the reason that, it being a visible object, the presumption is that the surveyor made no mistake when he said he ran to the same, though the distance called for may indicate the contrary, Courts have said, in some cases, that the call for an open prairie line may be given the same weight as a call for a marked line, upon the supposition that, inasmuch as such line could easily have been ascertained by running it out from a near-by known corner, it ought to be presumed that the surveyor, in calling for the same, had ascertained its true location."
http://txls.texas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Law_Case_Index.doc (Word doc)
