Nothing Amiss
There is no contradiction. We use the description, including the cited dimensions to guide us to where the boundaries are on the ground. We do not hold the dimensions supreme to control the boundaries, but merely as guides to find them. Once we've found them on the ground, we measure and report what we have found.
We do not change the description because it was sufficient to guide us to where the boundaries exist. If we change it, we risk altering an element that should be relied on to find the boundary, or more likely, enable someone else to alter that element.
What often happens is that a surveyor who does not understand that the deed is a guide to find existent boundaries rather than a stone tablet from in high providing perfect dimensions by which to control boundaries, comes along, worships the dimensions, stakes out the boundary in some place that it never existed, and proceeds to tell their client that the true boundary is wrong even though it may have been the only one that ever truly existed.
Even when the surveyor rewriting the description is careful to provide all the proper calls to all the proper bounds in order to preserve the intent of the original description, I have seen far too often that a title clerk or paralegal will transcribe the description onto a deed form, leaving out all that useless talk of to such n such a line, along so n so creek, to an iron pipe, leaving only the really important bearings and distances. Waaayyy too much work to type all that other useless crap in. Besides, without it, the description all fits on one page and it will cost less to record. And so an aliquot 20 becomes an nearly rectangular parcel with exact dimensions of 1318.35', 662.25', 1321.91', and 660.53', and the next surveyor with a super duper whiz bang measuring device way better than the last guy had discovers the parcel overlaps the 20 to the south and has a gap along the east-west center of section line.
Bill
The County Surveyor is supposed to index Record of Surveys. Many County Surveyors do so but I don't think Sacramento does other than relying on the Assessor to do it.
