I'm home for lunch, hopefully the boss will call back to answer my question, but in the meantime, here are my thoughts:
It's not that anybody's wrong, but something's just not right. And my that, I mean that some days I feel like I've been given the best of tools, skills, and reflections by my mentors and the general surveying community, but there is still something missing. Perhaps in our legislatve mandate. Perhaps in the public's perception. Maybe in my own not-quite-ready-yet stage of development. Bear with me and we'll get to where I try to define it.
Today's job: verify some line points we set 2-3 years ago, verify the corners-set-by-others at the ends of the line are where we found them before, & set more line stakes for a fence. But as the story goes, the adjoiner pulled all the line stakes shortly after we set them.
I spent a while looking for our PKs in the street to no avail, then bootstrapped off the not-yet-verified set-by-others corner to stake to the control (short backsights to find longer ones). Found one. Dig for another but it's gone. Finally get oriented with acceptable precision. Verify the front corner-set-by-others.
Walk up the line towards the back corner and same as when we were here before, there is all sorts of landscaping, trees, mow lines, yard gnomes, some terracing, all clearly the adjoiner's occupation. There are also gravel French drains, the adjoiner's drains downhill into the client's drain system.
Suddenly a Half Bubble moment comes on and I am sitting in a seminar at the state conference, and they're talking about how to not get sued or rile up the neighborhood. The question was, if the corner fell 10 feet past a fence in the neighbor lady's raised flowerbed woud you stake it and flag it and paint it orange? Would you knock on her door first? If you didn't, and you did stake it, would it be tresspassing in your state? (It probably would be here.) Would you call it encroachment on your map or to your client? The advice was to not use the "e" word, not to stake anything, merely to map the discrepancies between record and occupation.
Meanwhile the clients are standing by shaking a can of marking paint, so they can mark the whole line, in addition to the requested line stakes. The third fence company was there to measure for a bid. The second fence company already got the bid and starts tomorrow. I overheard that the whole point of the fence is to mark the line, and third fence guy suggests if you don't need an actual fence, just set posts on line, which I thought was interesting. The clients also asked, if the adjoiners pull out the stakes again, what do we do? sue? call the sheriff?
I felt bad that I didn't have a good answer for them.
I walk up the terraced & moved area, and the line points we somewhat boldly set in the past are clearly gone. Standing there I get a gut feeling that if I stake this line the stakes will just get pulled. The neighbor clearly occupies this and has for quite some time, and has put a lot of work into it. My gut feeling is that I am standing in the middle of something way bigger than me, that I don't want to rile up or piss off, especially on behalf of the boss.
It's my week for humble pie. About this time I realize that when I grabbed the points out of the CAD drawing, all the staked points from that job were xref'd in, and so didn't come through in the point file. This means I don't have coords for the line points we set to verify they are truly gone. (I also realize that I haven't truly verified that front corner, it matched the calc'd point but not the point as found a couple years back. Angels dancing on the head of a pin, I know, but it's the principle of the thing, just how I think of it... )
I find the back corner and it looks undisturbed since last time. I mull over my options. I could brush out about 40 feet of stuff that has grown up since last time we were here, but they say there's no point as they aren't building the fence that far back. I could occupy the front corner and turn an angle for line, but I would rather see the back mon. There is a control point near the line points but I would need to stake to it to find it, if it wasn't pulled, and I don't have that coordinate either.
So I tell the clients I need to go get the coords and ask the boss a few things. Dude has a little bit of cubeland sarcasm for me about I've been there two hours and how much have I gotten done marking his line? Also has a bit of venom about the adjoiner, the usual blah blah where people spout what they think their rights are. This doesn't help my gut feelings either.
So here's my issue, what I am missing. What if we mark that line on the ground, but the line itself trespasses the adjoiner's occupation? Now we are just the hamfisted surveyors, riling up the neighborhood. At what point, as a surveyor, do you just say, there is a line there, but it crosses the neighbor's occupation, and I'm not going to stake that until you get some kind of agreement with him?
At what point do you say, this isn't really a survey issue, this is a legal issue, and refer them to an attorney? Especially when they have already expressed that they don't want to lawyer up.
I know some of you would say just stake it and git'r'dun and let them go to waving shotguns and chainsawing the fence down. One guy has a deed description that says he owns the land, the other guys has several years of occupation.
Well, gotta eat and back to work. Not sure I defined "it" very well. Help me out.
Stake it, and let the lawyers and judges decide who owns it.
> Stake it, and let the lawyers and judges decide who owns it.
Agree totally.
Do what you are hired to do. You aren't trespassing on the neighbor until a court moves the line you stake.
If your stakes/marks turn up missing again, tell your client to report it to the police as vandalism and nothing else.
I agree. Stake it, the rest is for lawyers and judges.
Also, put in rebar for your line stakes, putting the stake next to it. Point this out to the client so he can come back and find them.
First of all, I would be dang sure I did not make a mistake or miss some records during research. I would be very sure there were no past boundary line adjustments or agreements that were missed. I would actually contact the adjoining owner and let them know what I was doing to avoid shotguns being pointed. If they are that hell bent on keeping you out, you might as well figure that out up front. Then you can have a sheriff watch your back.
Also many times I have seen a mistake ripple through a subdivision. Each adjoiner is encroaching onto the next. They all have the correct widths, it's just shifted. You may be able to obtain additional work getting it resolved for more than one client.
The lines have to be marked on the ground and a record of survey prepared before all the facts are known. An informed decision cannot be made without all of the facts.
As far as stakes being pulled, do what the old timers did. Set yourself a sub-surface marker below the stake. Take photos with a pocket tape stretched out showing the difference between occupation and the line you are marking.
-----------------------------
Needing direction from the boss...forgot the coordinate file...
That is what modern day cell phones are for.
You can even have the files e-mailed to your phone, then blue-toothed to the DC.
JRL
This is why we get paid the big bucks. Seriously.
We should approach every job with that same fear of having missed something during research or getting a number wrong or thinking backwards or realizing you meant to say left instead of right or whatever. When the physical evidence agrees with our preconceived expectations, we assume we are doing a job correctly. Why is it that we tend to only assume we have done something wrong or missed something when the physical evidence contradicts those preconceived expectations? How many times have you made an error where there was no physical evidence present to make you stop to pause and reconsider what you have just done? It may be days or it may be years, but, eventually, that error will come to light.
An example of this came up during one of my surveys of some lots in a subdivision from 40 years earlier. One of the lots had later been split to sell a wedge to an adjoiner for some reason about 20 years prior to my arrival on the scene. At one end the 50.0 foot lot had been split at a point 23.8 feet from one corner and 26.2 feet from the other. At least, that's what the deed said. In fact, the apparently undisturbed monument was 26.2 feet from the first corner and 23.8 feet from the other. Clearly, one of two things had happened. The bar was put in the correct place and the description was wrong or the description was correct and the monument was set based on the tape being laid down in the wrong direction.
I always set and locate 8" magnails when I mark a line. Then I drive the wooden stake on top of the nails. The nail gets driven down straight enough that when you are called back after the stakes mysteriously disappear, you can use the stored location of the nails to dig down and find them, usually within a couple hundredths of where you left them. This often results in some red-faced clients or adjoiners, but it is irrefutable evidence of the location of my stake.
I agree. I have been involved in surveying since I was 12, never did get paid big money 🙁
When I am doing construction staking, I am always very careful to not make a mistake. However further scrutiny is called for when something clearly does not make sense. By the sounds of it they have already gone through this process.
I think you should always speak to the owner of the property you are surveying. This includes all adjoiners, as they share the line. They may have additional information they can provide that would help unravel mysteries.
Owners can point you to hidden monuments from un-recorded surveys. 50% of the time they lead you on a wild goose chase, the other 50% of the time they know EXACTLY what they are talking about. I have learned not to discount what old timers say.
JRL
Thanks, half...
Paying attention to the hackles on the back of your neck is the surest and safest way to survey. Having a cavalier attitude of "stake it and let the lawyers fight it out" is precisely why our profession has such a black eye with the public. It does no good to the client, no good to the neighbor, and no good to the profession, to stake a line that is obviously in conflict with other evidence, especially the neighbor's expectations.
The first question that comes to my mind when you said that the neighbor had torn out the earlier stakes is, "Why?" Obviously, the neighbor is under some understanding of the boundary location that disagrees with the survey markers that were set. If he wasn't they'd still be there. If he is, what is he basing his understanding on? There must be something that has represented the boundary location in a position other than the survey marks reveal. What is it?
The only way to ever know is to ask. The only person to ask is the neighbor who has a different idea. Maybe the neighbor knows something important, maybe he doesn't. The only way for the surveyor to know is to ask.
So, ask.
JBS
Submitting the problem to the Legal system should be avoided if at all possible.
I have one going on right now that we are 5 years in and still no resolution.
Lawsuits are very expensive.
We have an adversarial court system. The way it works is two parties have a dispute (such as the boundary location) that they can't resolve themselves. So one sues the other. Each side tries to prove their version of the boundary using Attorneys and Experts (that is where the Land Surveyor comes in). You can't just say submit it to the Court system and walk away because you will be expected to attempt to persuade the Judge or Jury why your boundary is correct. Therefore you have to know why it is correct, legally.
And get paid to be an expert witness...
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
I was wondering what JB was thinking when he read the "stake it and let the lawyers and judges figure it out"
You guys really should think about that for little more than a minute and a half....that is simply technician work!
What do you say to the judge when he/she asks you if you have tried to resolve the case before taking it to the judge?
And he/she will ask it.
WOW!
Keith
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
What do you say to the judge when he/she asks you if you have tried to resolve the case before taking it to the judge?
"Well, your honor, I went to the neighbor's front door and knocked. They read me the riot act and threatened me, so I left without completing my work. That's why we are all here today taking up your time."
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
I guess if the neighbor does not like what you are doing, just abandon the project and head for the bar?
Keith
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
Yep, that's all we are supposed to do. Take some numbers off a piece of paper, place them in the magical autocad/carlson, and out it spits more magical numbers to be entered into the data collector/gps, and then viola!!!!!! We have a property boundary to stake!! So that is what we go do, we stake those magical numbers within a RCH on the ground and if they happen to conflict with anything, well, too damn bad. Tell your client "well, it sucks to be a landowner doesn't it?" But, we collect our check, send the landowners into a legal battle, and sit and hope that we get to collect an even bigger fee when called as an "expert witness" for performing a "technicians" job!!!
Oh the irony!!!
Anyone wonder why our profession is in the state of disrespect it currently is? Is it any wonder why in some states we are lumped with flower arrangers and dog groomers. Right where we deserve to be.
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
Very well said, Brian!
Talk about hackles on the back of your neck!
> I was wondering what JB was thinking when he read the "stake it and let the lawyers and judges figure it out"
>
> You guys really should think about that for little more than a minute and a half....that is simply technician work!
>
> What do you say to the judge when he/she asks you if you have tried to resolve the case before taking it to the judge?
>
> And he/she will ask it.
>
> WOW!
>
> Keith
What I was thinking?
The boss was out of town today, called me back at 5, listened to my concerns. He then instructed me to set line points up to the obvious occupation at the mow line and stop there, and he would call the client to explain.
I would have talked to the adjoiner myself, and said, "your neighbors hired us to mark this line, but it looks like it crosses an area that you love and take care of and regard as yours, so I will only set these stakes if it is okay with you?" BUT ... the clients picked today for the rush job since they knew he was out of town.
GunMan: Good point about the research and perhaps missing a BLA or short plat. We did the research back when we did the boundary, all pretty straightforward on this particular one. As for cell phones, email, bluetooth ... nice stuff but I have a primitive cell phone, not a smart phone. As it was, Mrs. Bubble was out with the tiny Bubbles, so there was no one to email me that stuff or read it to me over the phone. (I really should migrate my desktop to a laptop and just have the CAD and star*net with me in the field.)
JBStahl: Yes, the shut up and stake it attitude is why the public regards us as tradesmen. And it was exactly what the clients wanted. And they were offended when I dared to say, gotta check with the boss, might not stake it today, or at all. As I said above, I'd have talked to the adjoiner myself had the clients not specifically picked a day when he wasn't around.
Something I said while talking to the boss was: "if this were my future stamp, I would be telling the client that I will not stake this line until I see them shaking hands with the adjoiner." Seriously, that's how it's gonna be. Whole new ball game for surveying.
enough for now, thanks everyone for your thoughts so far.
> I know some of you would say just stake it and git'r'dun and let them go to waving shotguns and chainsawing the fence down. One guy has a deed description that says he owns the land, the other guys has several years of occupation.
>
> Well, gotta eat and back to work. Not sure I defined "it" very well. Help me out.
The deed staker's dilemma. Remember, the deed refers to the location of the boundary at some time in the past. Property owners can establish legal boundaries that are not the same as the original boundary or the record description could have been wrong when the deed was recorded.
It is the surveyor's professional responsibility to recover and analyze the field evidence, compare that with the record and decide which is the legal boundary.
No judge nor a lawyer can provide this service but a judge can review the surveyors decision so the surveyor must know the law, ignorance is no excuse but ignorance is a reason to revoke the surveyor's license.
Richard Schaut
Great statement, Richard
No judge nor a lawyer can provide this service but a judge can review the surveyors decision so the surveyor must know the law, ignorance is no excuse but ignorance is a reason to revoke the surveyor's license.
Some actually believe that Judges know surveying law!
Keith