Please share stories of situations where an ALTA NSPS Land Title Survey was performed and the surveyor suffered under some sort of negative results of actual liability.
I am aware of only one, fortunately it was secondhand. Prior to the firm I was working for at the time, another surveying firm did an ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey on a regional shopping mall. They miss counted the parking spaces by an entire parking lot. The number graphically depicted was correct, but in the surveyors tally table he missed it by like 300 spaces. I can't remember if he counted that parking lot twice or zero times. Probably twice, because I think they (developer) thought they were over-parked and could build an addition or pad building by removing some parking. Big oooops!
When doing malls, I remember it taking almost a day just to count parking. Walking the parking lot for 8 hours just counting parking. Then in the office it taking about 4 hours to check that it was graphically depicted correctly. I guess that is what happens when you are counting 5,000 of something...
Needless to say, when I worked there parking counts were a big issue, that we always checked. Especially after we found out how large of a mistake was made on that other ALTA's parking count. I do not know the damage$, but it was large enough I remember it being an issue, and that was a long time ago in my medium sized career.?ÿ
Sounds a bit like the Perry Mason episode last night.?ÿ A developer was buying out an orange grove in order to have enough parking spaces for his commercial development.?ÿ The old timer who owned the orange grove backed out at the last minute.?ÿ Things turned very ugly, very soon.
Side story:?ÿ This episode was from early 1963.?ÿ The old timer claimed to have received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt in 1898.?ÿ He was 20 in 1898.?ÿ He would have been 85 in 1963.?ÿ The actor was born in 1910, so was only 53.
I did one on a shopping center a while back.?ÿ It was a relatively new center and there was an irrigation ditch running into it that was open air to the NE of the site then they took it underground in an easement through the center.?ÿ When they built the curb they added a depressed section for the ditch rider path.?ÿ The adjoiner to the east was using it as open season for an extra egress from his property without the benefit of a recorded easement.?ÿ I pointed it out as an area of concern on the draft survey I sent out for review.?ÿ My Client's attorney promptly called me up and chewed me up one side and down the other for trying to kill the deal.?ÿ I told her look, didn't you hire me as insurance against crap you wouldn't know about otherwise??ÿ It's just the draft, tell the seller to correct the situation before you close and it won't be a problem.?ÿ No real liability but the first time a Client side team member blew me up for trying to watch out for them.?ÿ?ÿ
had the same thing happen over a snowmobile trail. threats by the attorney not to pay me ect.
Arthur Hunnicutt made a living playing grizzled old characters. He looked the part from about the age of 30, but was only 69 when he passed away.
The episode is fun for the brief look at 1960's era heavy equipment. Lee van Cleef plays the part of Civil Engineer.
start with some background Part 1
Part 2 may be what you are looking for
I know of one done by a colleague in the '80s in San Francisco.?ÿ Details are a little fuzzy, but I believe he showed a couple of parking spaces clearly in the public ROW, but the client -- a layman -- interpreted the spaces to be within his ownership and had his development plans derailed when, after a lot of design work, it became clear that he didn't own those spaces.?ÿ As I recall, the surveyor settled rather than go to trial, and I think the bill was in the $70k range.
I'm retracing an ALTA from 2016 this week. Surveyor notes the datum is horizontal NAD83 and vertical NAVD88. Horizontal is off by ?ñ7ft and vertical is off by 24ft. Appears they may have used an Autonomous GPS position for the entire job. I'm not sure if I should open this can of worms with the previous surveyor.
Back in the wild west days of lender certifications:
Surveyor performs an ALTA on an empty lot in DC with a 3' stone retaining wall running the length one property line.?ÿ That's 3' high - above ex grade on the subject side, maybe 6" on the adjoiner side. Surveyor certifies that there are "no encroachments".
Transaction goes through, office building is designed on site with the minimum side setbacks.
Either in construction or when the designer is having geotech boring performed they determine that the site has about ten feet of fill dating from the 1930s or 1940s.?ÿ Turns out that, prior to the fill, the site looked something like the picture below and the new building footprint was designed on top of the supporting buttresses.
That's when everyone around here started adding "visible" to their certifications
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