Did everybody leave their survey textbooks

We are off to the ocean on a hot day in Central California, so play nice, and be productive.

Keith

Better than any textbook

Better yet, here is a case decided by the US Supreme Court in 1888 that dealt with that exact issue, among others. As the justices pointed out the obvious settled principle of law:
>
>It is unquestionably true that a junior survey cannot control or enlarge the dimensions of a senior survey. We understand this to mean that when the location of a survey is or can be ascertained and determined by its own marks upon the ground -- its own calls and courses and distances -- it cannot be changed or controlled or enlarged or diminished by the marks or lines of an adjoining junior survey; [...]
>
>
CLEMENT V. PACKER, 125 U. S. 309 (1888)

Better than any textbook

Kent,

If you’re expecting to change Keith’s thinking…. It aint gonna happen.

If your just havin fun…. Keep at it.

BTW boundary construction methods around here are very similar to Texas it seems.

Better than any textbook

Keith evidently suffers that disconnect of having spent a majority of his career as a gubmint bureaucrat, out of touch with real-world impacts on landowners and their rights and how the courts have dealt with these very real issues.

Blocks of Surveys

> BTW boundary construction methods around here are very similar to Texas it seems.

Yes, in fact at least one Texas court has cited Clement v. Packer (which dealt with land in Pennsylvania) in a case also dealing with blocks of surveys and the implications that the fact that multiple surveys were made at the same time by the same surveyor has upon the determination of boundaries within the block.

Gunter C.

It was my experience in state government service was that the higher one got in the food chain, e.g. chief surveyor or chief engineer, the further away they were from any real surveying or engineering.

Kent's premise that the principle that senior surveys (senior rights) trump junior rights (junior surveys) is irrefutable at face value and I can't believe that Keith took the bait. In the real world unfortunately it isn't that simple.

The question one needs to ask is: are the monuments being called original senior monuments in fact the original monuments, and, are they in their original position? How much uncertainty can an adversarial opinion cast on that presumption? Also, there is the concept of Equitable Doctrines of boundary establishment that is pertinent to the discussion.

Equitable Doctrines of boundary establishment are a matter for the courts to decide. However, we are constantly challenged with situations where we have to make judgments about them and put that variable into the equation. Not every survey can be adjudicated and there will be times that we as surveyors have to make the decision.

Hey guys,

Just post those quotes from a survey textbook that supports your conclusions and then I will quit.

Is it that difficult to find something?

This "settled Law" has to be easy to find.

Maybe something newer than a 1888 case?

Anything?

Keith

Seems to be several on here that enjoy giving insults

Why not just stick to the issues and provide what I have been asking for.

Your insults only point fingers at you.

Keith

> Equitable Doctrines of boundary establishment are a matter for the courts to decide. However, we are constantly challenged with situations where we have to make judgments about them and put that variable into the equation. Not every survey can be adjudicated and there will be times that we as surveyors have to make the decision.

Yes, but practically as a rule, situations such as the one that Carl originally described where a private surveyor had by evident mistake marked a corner of a junior survey in conflict with a senior survey in which the State had paramount title or interest wouldn't be a close call.

Seems to be several on here that enjoy giving insults

"...appropriate text from any book on junior-senior corners..."

Keith

I believe Kent's citation [CLEMENT V. PACKER, 125 U. S. 309 (1888)] is in a book (United States Supreme Court Report 125 U.S. 309), per you original request.

> Just post those quotes from a survey textbook that supports your conclusions and then I will quit.
>
> Is it that difficult to find something?
>
> This "settled Law" has to be easy to find.
>
> Maybe something newer than a 1888 case?

Yeah, guys, don't mess around with any of those actual decisions rendered by the US Supreme Court 120 years ago to show that some legal principle has been considered to be "obvious" for at least ... 120 years. By "settled" of course, what we really mean is something that perhaps Richard Schaut would agree with or something like that. And it has to be a survey textbook! No cheating and looking at law books!

And another thing: if that "survey textbook" mentions case law, it obviously isn't a real survey textbook, so it doesn't count!

🙂

. . . . .that's all there is . . . .

?

Seems to be several on here that enjoy giving insults

> I believe Kent's citation [CLEMENT V. PACKER, 125 U. S. 309 (1888)] is in a book (United States Supreme Court Report 125 U.S. 309), per you original request.

Oddly enough, it's also quoted in another book, The BLM Public Lands Surveying Casebook, as the case that establishes the legal authority for the use of junior corners to reestablish a senior line "in the event of extensive obliteration or loss of the senior corners"

BLM Public Land Surveying Casebook

> Oddly enough, it's also quoted in another book, The BLM Public Lands Surveying Casebook [...]

LOL!

BLM Public Land Surveying Casebook

A few comments:

In general, I agree with Kent's statement and the Clement vs. Packer quote "Jr. surveys can't change Sr. surveys... provided the senior survey can be retraced with some good certainty". If there is long standing occupation based on the Jr. survey, then the line would bend by A&R, but, of course, the line would bend by A&R, whether or not there was a Jr. survey. But, where I am originally from, Atlanta, GA., maybe most LS's would yield to Carl's OTIF set 50 years ago based on the fact that for the most part, GA, R/W mon.s are not carefully set by LS's, but rather by contractors. Thus, they don't get much respect from local LSs. I have long advocated that they should be held like any other monument, but about half or more of LSs hold to R/W plans based on centerline locations. But I'm just explaining my take on it, Carl did make it plain that where he is from they are set tight and meant to be held, and that is good.

However, As they are several hundred feet from the corner in question, I think that 0.14' is not too bad. Kent did make me think by asking, "what if it was 0.5' into the R/W, or 1', or 5'?" OK. But what if it was 0.1' or 0.07'? It goes both ways. Would you go all the way down to the DIN spec.s of your instrument before you accepted the old iron? I think that it was set pretty damn good for it's age.

Another thing to consider is when the LS set the iron 50 years ago, did he have more evidence available to him than Carl has now? Were there more R/W mon.s closer to the subject property that have disappeared over the years?

Or is there any ground creep? Is the terrain sloped? Would you accept a little ground movement before you re-monumented?

Finally, ask yourself, when the subject property was surveyed 50 years ago, how was the reality different then that from what we have now? You have a property owner who desires to know the extent of his domain. He has every right in the world to rely on the work of the private LS to show him what he owns and to build and improve to that extent. And we find out decades later that the private LS did a pretty good job. Are we to be forever adjusting monument lines as technology improves?

Stephen

BLM Public Land Surveying Casebook

Knowledge gained from "textbooks" = 0.05%
Knowledge gained from real-world / everyday surveying = 99.5%

Does anyone else spend their days reading textbooks? I don't.

Say that again?

. . .establishes the legal authority for the use of junior corners to reestablish a senior line. . .

Keith

BLM Public Land Surveying Casebook

Correction, 99.95% (I was in a hurry)