I have an unusual task to do sometime this week. I need to write yet another letter to an elderly client explaining that I've found the 1840-vintage boundary he hired me to find and that his cherished ideas about where one of the tract's corners was turned out to be greatly incorrect. Collecting the fee for the work isn't the problem. This has been a long, drawn-out survey in which the single most difficult aspect of it has been preparing the client for an answer which is at such variance with his ideas.
This particular survey was one that probably is the single most difficult retracement I can recall in my career. The entire area is a bit like surveying in the Twilight Zone, but persistence and chasing down every possibility finally paid off and the solution clicked into place with the evidence. Unfortunately, the client is a guy who has been living with his pet theories for quite a long time and so far has been completely invested in them. In particular, he's in love with one rock mound that probably was built around 1915, he believing it to be the same rock mound called for in the 1840's vintage conveyance and with a fertile mind to explain the absence of the bearing trees called for by the 1840 surveyor.
Since this is the Twilight Zone, naturally, there is no record that has turned up of the survey that built his rock mound. The date is inferred from various evidence that on the whole is compelling.
The ethical issues with client communications at this stage include:
a) making the client aware that one has performed the work agreed to,
b) making an explanation in language that the client can understand of any matters requiring further action, and
c) making any necessary qualifications of the opinion given, (such as whether the survey was performed in the Twilight Zone or not.)
This is going to be work, I think. It's one thing to say "keep it simple", but it probably would be unethical to eliminate much of the detail that works against brevity.
He hasn't insisted that the lines are curved, though
One thing I will say for the old fellow: he hasn't insisted that his South boundary that runs along the south boundary of a league surveyed in 1835 is ... curved. :>
Been there. You were apparently successful but I worked for several years off and on trying to retrace a placer claim that had been hydraulically mined, along with much of the surrounding property and I was not so fortunate. It had been surveyed in the gold rush era and patented but the survey had hundreds of feet of error in its calls and I never did find anything that I could swear was original. There were if I recall 3 GLO surveys and two private surveys of the township line that had a relationship to the south line of the claim. I suggested boundary agreements but he was in a battle with the adjoiner about who cut whose trees, so nobody was in a mood to agree to anything.
So that doesn't sound too similar to your situation since I didn't ever complete the survey, but the owner had very strong opinions about where he thought the claim was, none of which ever "panned out" to make any sense. He would call me back out and show me some old stump that he was convinced was one of the old original posts, for example. When I would point out that posts don't have roots growing out of the bottom, he'd keep looking for that holy grail of evidence calling me back out to locate this and that. He was convinced that the canyon running through the claim had moved hundreds of feet, blah, blah. No proof. None of the more recent retracement "surveys" or more like guesses held together worth beans.
He and I got along fine though, because he respected my resistance to his theories. I would point out on the quad how the topo calls on the original township surveys matched the current topo really well and for his theories to work, entire ridge lines and creeks would have all had to move the same direction the same amount. What I'm getting at is that I hope your client, when you patiently show him the evidence of why he can't possibly be right, respects your stubbornness and tenacity to stick with it and not be swayed by what the client wanted to hear.
> What I'm getting at is that I hope your client, when you patiently show him the evidence of why he can't possibly be right, respects your stubbornness and tenacity to stick with it and not be swayed by what the client wanted to hear.
Well, I'm going to find out. I will say that for years I dreamed of sometime having a client who actually knew something about his or her land and this guy was remarkable in having studied his abstract of title quite thoroughly and having identified the various discrepancies that presented themselves in the history of conveyances. My new rule is: don't work for clients who have studied their abstract of title if:
a) they have previously litigated boundary issues all the way to the state Supreme Court,
b) they are people of strong, inflexible opinions (hard to know in advance, I admit), and
c) they are already embroiled in a dispute in which the boundary location is at issue.
I'll have to write this particular one up. It is easily one of the stranger retracement problems I've seen. It's sort of par for the course that it would be more difficult to convince the client of the correctnes of the solution than it would be to actually find the solution in the first place.
This particular retracement problem almost literally consisted of a solution by exhaustion, i.e. exploring and rejecting the most likely theories in order of the reasonable estimate of probability, only to discover that one supposed low probability explanation was in fact the 100% probability correct one.
My modus operandi when dealing with elderly clients is to make it more of a family affair. Having their adult children and possibly adult grandchildren involved goes a long way in getting them to believe in the validity of your findings. As they say: three heads is better than one.
What I don't understand is how there could possibly be a parcel of land in Central Texas that could be so screwed up? I thought all those old past and present Texas surveyors knew what they were doing and documented their surveys in a straight forward fashion? 🙂
> What I don't understand is how there could possibly be a parcel of land in Central Texas that could be so screwed up? I thought all those old past and present Texas surveyors knew what they were doing and documented their surveys in a straight forward fashion?
Well, in the 1840's, the Indians were still in possession of much of the land or at least were willing to dispute possession by combat. The 1840's surveyor gave passing calls on creeks and marked corners with bearing tree calls. We found very old rock mounds along some of the lines he ran that are most likely his work.
Where things went wrong is that he gave a grossly erroneous tie to the beginning corner from a corner of the league of land (4424 acre tract) of which the 400 acres he'd surveyed was a part. Later surveyors, not unreasonably, attempted to follow his footsteps by running out that tie, but without realizing that they were more than 300 ft. from where he had actually marked the corner.
The owner of the 400 acres was killed by Indians in the 1840's and so wasn't around to point out his boundaries when later surveyors arrived. The original owner of the tract adjoining the line in dispute was engaged in a blood feud with another area resident and managed to contract lead poisoning of the projectile variety.
In the 20th century, the land was not extremely valuable and somewhat remote. That all worked against anyone figuring out the puzzle until yours truly did.
Not Understanding the Problem
I'd say over the course of the last ten years I've seen you explain all kinds of things clearly......what's different?
Oh, yeah.....you have to deal with someone with "strong, inflexible opinions".
So, how long did your survey of Keith's property take?
Not Understanding the Problem
> I'd say over the course of the last ten years I've seen you explain all kinds of things clearly......what's different?
>
> Oh, yeah.....you have to deal with someone with "strong, inflexible opinions".
>
> So, how long did your survey of Keith's property take?
🙂
Not Understanding the Problem
> Oh, yeah.....you have to deal with someone with "strong, inflexible opinions".
Yes, I'll definitely give it another go, but this guy is like many posters who adopt a pet idea of how things ought to be, proceed for years as if that is in fact the case, but without the benefit of the law or the facts, and then resist all evidence to the contrary.
Not Understanding the Problem
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. - Virgil