surv8r, post: 414619, member: 4 wrote: "The road itself is the controlling monument. Split the roadway pavement to establish the centerline, then measures the distances either side of that centerline to establish your R/W lines"
Brian Allen, post: 414508, member: 1333 wrote: I agree. They were set to mark the "right of way", they have been treated for many years as marking the right of way, most usually have "right of way" stamped on them., In most cases there are maps/plans filed with the DOT that call them out as marking the right of way.
Legally, how do these monuments rate getting ignored over mere measurements? If they mean absolutely nothing to no one, why were they even set, just to create confusion so the DOT's can force landowners to move their improvements every time a surveyor "recreates" where the line was supposed to have placed?
Actually, the relatively crude pre-cast right-of-way markers that some construction contractor installed generally represent various stations on the centerline and offsets from that centerline. In the case where the State has taken fee simple title to a strip of land 100.00 ft. in width, 50.00 ft. to each side of a centerine "as now staked out" at a time months or years before some road contractor placed the right-of-way markers, to argue that the State now only owns a strip of land 99.00 ft. wide since that is the distance between where the contractor's markers are would be a loser.
What an actual land surveyor would do is to reconstruct the centerline stations from the markers and locate the actual boundary of the land acquired by the State in relation to that. This is generally a fairly definite exercise using the following principles:
- the centerline station will be on a line connecting the centers of right-of-way markers found plumb and intact on opposite sides of the highway at nominally the same centerline station.
- highway curves with small deflection angles were most likely laid out by running the centerline to the PI and measuring from the PI to the PC and PT stations.
- right-of-way markers found plumb and intact will ordinarily be the most likely to represent the point as marked,
- the centers of the broken stubs of right-of-way markers that have been sheared off by impact will be likely to represent the point as marked, although less so than the plumb intact markers do,
- right-of-way markers that have been pushed out of plumb no longer represent the point as marked, but if replumbed their centers may
- right-of-way markers opposite PIs in the centerline were sometimes placed on perpendiculars to either the CL FWD or BK, not on angle bisectors.
- right-of-way markers that have been moved often show the marks of the old bury lines on their sides.
- construction is generally a Comedy of Errors and sometimes right-of-way markers got installed in completely the wrong position, and
- as a general rule, suing the State to establish a boundary under some doctrine of equity will not be possible.
Brian Allen, post: 414508, member: 1333 wrote: I agree. They were set to mark the "right of way", they have been treated for many years as marking the right of way, most usually have "right of way" stamped on them., In most cases there are maps/plans filed with the DOT that call them out as marking the right of way.
Legally, how do these monuments rate getting ignored over mere measurements? If they mean absolutely nothing to no one, why were they even set, just to create confusion so the DOT's can force landowners to move their improvements every time a surveyor "recreates" where the line was supposed to have placed?
In Ky, the deed doesnt mention monuments. The calls are to station/offsets. Monument locations on the plans are also listedby station/offset.
If you're measuring to the center of a 4" square concrete RW marker in this state, you're wrong. The center back of the monument was to mark the point.
An excellent example is a State highway West of Buda, Texas where the right-of-way fences were built right on the take lines, with substantial pipe posts in concrete at the PIs and PC and PT stations on both sides of the right-of-way. When it came time for the construction contractor to install the right-of-way markers, there was already a pipe post in place where the marker should have ended up and the markers were shifted by feet to accomodate that fact. Did that somehow rearrange the boundaries of the land that the State of Texas owned? Obviously not.
Andy Bruner, post: 414618, member: 1123 wrote: I agree BUT the attorney from the Attorney General's office (in Georgia) that I heard speak said that the highway IS the monument from which all deeds are referenced (X feet left or right of station Y+YY). I have seen too many monuments that I or one of my crews staked set feet from the stake. I use R/W monuments only as indicators of the general vicinity.
Andy
So the R/W moves every time the centerline gets painted, every time a shoulder grows during an overlay or shoulder widening, and every time the DOT flattens a curve? The Georgia King really does get his!
Rankin_File, post: 414626, member: 101 wrote: If you're measuring to the center of a 4" square concrete RW marker in this state, you're wrong. The center back of the monument was to mark the point.
Interesting. In Texas the centers of the precast concrete markers represent (without any exception that comes to mind) the supposed right-of-way line.
Rankin_File, post: 414626, member: 101 wrote: If you're measuring to the center of a 4" square concrete RW marker in this state, you're wrong. The center back of the monument was to mark the point.
sometimes there are even little rebar next to the monument 😉
Jp7191, post: 414611, member: 1617 wrote: This is the way I see it. Guy owns a piece of property. Dot takes a variable width sliver for bus turn out. The dot monuments the angle points and begin and end where the sliver joins the standard r/w. They file a survey in the public record showing the newly created r/w and monuments that represent that r/w. The guy then hires a wall contractor to build a very expensive wall, and he strings from monument to monument correctly and builds the wall correctly holding the tangent parts of wall 0.10' off the string line onto the property owners side and puts decorative curves in the wall at the angle points in such a way that the original monuments are preserved and not effected by the construction. And the property owner has state of the art surveillance cameras recording everything from the placement of the monuments to the string lines pulled over the monuments and checks the mason continued to make while constructing and as-building. 5 years go by and there is a GOD sanctioned ADA (Americans with disabilities act) compliance issue because the distance between the ownerÛªs wall and a signal pole does not meet the GOD sanctioned minimum distance. So the DOT surveyor (New one right out of college) and with his brand new coordinate system and millimeter gps system works up the centerline and r/w from the "Controlling Monuments, 5"brass disks marked "DOT CP 10007 and 10008" set a year earlier on the newest derived dot coordinate system , and 5000' feet away from the site and translates rotates and masturbates the 5 year old "local datum plane" coordinates with the high powered software he learned to use in college 18 months earlier and he declares that the monuments set 5 years earlier are between 3" to 1'-6" out of position (towards the centerline) because "they must of been disturbed during construction", therefore the wall is encroached into the "KINGS R/W" by 2" to 1'-5". But this owner has more money than the state (State retirement system has the state broke) and they go to court. No way in hell the KING GETS HIS! Chances of this happening about 0. So being a business man an weighing liability and who has the power we typically give the king his. Like I said 'IÛªm so confused". Jp
[SARCASM]p.s. punctuation and spelling Nazis, Kiss off[/SARCASM] 🙂
While your political views are questionable I completely agree with your analysis of the boundary situation.
Jim in AZ, post: 414466, member: 249 wrote: Do your DOT's accept found monuments along Federal & State Highways? Or do they reject them and create a "best-fit" line through them and then document how far off the best-fit line each monument falls.
Are you, as a private surveyor, allowed to do this, or do the monuments control the line location, with a bearing change at each monument?
I am of the mind to hold the monumentation unless like Kent said: Some of the concrete right-of-way markers may be wildly out of position. My experience with our DOT is that they do a best fit that always gives them the right-of-way width regardless of senior monumentation or findings that would contradict. Recently DOT has decided that it costs too much to replace centerline monumentation and that most all registered surveyors arenÛªt qualified to replace those monuments in the correct position (I actually had a DOT engineer tell me this) so they have set off-line witness corners that control multiple centerline positions by coordinates. Funny, because DOT has no problem with letting a grade hop employed by the contractor do quantities for payment and all positioning for project, - no questions asked.
Andy Bruner, post: 414618, member: 1123 wrote: I agree BUT the attorney from the Attorney General's office (in Georgia) that I heard speak said that the highway IS the monument from which all deeds are referenced (X feet left or right of station Y+YY). I have seen too many monuments that I or one of my crews staked set feet from the stake. I use R/W monuments only as indicators of the general vicinity.
Andy
So in other words the State of Georgia takes the position that the ROW moves when the highway is improved without any additional compensation to the effected land owners?
I don't get the argument that monuments don't control because they were set by a contractor. When someone hires a surveyor to subdivide their land the surveyor is a contractor. I never heard an argument that original monuments only hold if they were physical set by the land owner.
It is also well established by the courts that original monuments hold even if the deed does not mention them.
Locally there exist many types of highway monuments:
4x4 treated post
8in round treated post guarding a 1in iron rod
3x3 concrete monument
4x4 concrete monument
brass disk set in 8to12in concrete monument
I've found varying degree of them matching the highway r/w plans and have found in most cases to use them to create a best fit to the deeded r/w as possible.
Most every highway has equations in the plans because of reroutes and mistakes along the route.
Many times the monuments themselves do not match the plans and the plans do not always match the deeds, 50ft or a 100ft off of station and 5 to 10ft wrong according to the distance from centerline.
Federal roads have proved to be ruled by the deeded r/w regardless of where the monument falls and I have seen portions of buildings, garages and homes in place for many years sawed off to match the r/w.
I have seen many times that people have actually dug concrete monuments up and dug deeper and reset the monument to be below or flush with the ground.
One frame home near Caddo lake has concrete r/w monuments as piers. They were hijacked during a widening project.
I have always given the King his deeded distances unless the contrary can be proven, like in the case where it is obvious that a scrivener error has been made.
A few years ago I came across a r/w plan east of Naples, Tx that the tech from the late 1960s had simply given up on the calculations of where the asbuilt r/w connected to the new plans connected where two curved r/w intersected at an intersection and were on a rather obtuse convergence. He had smoothed out the lines on the plans to hide a widow peak 75ft left of Station 26+33.56 in a man's front yard.
aliquot, post: 414652, member: 2486 wrote: I don't get the argument that monuments don't control because they were set by a contractor. When someone hires a surveyor to subdivide their land the surveyor is a contractor. I never heard an argument that original monuments only hold if they were physical set by the land owner.
It is also well established by the courts that original monuments hold even if the deed does not mention them.
Well, what "original monument" means in the normal sense is a monument that the parties had in view at the time that the conveyance was made. Monuments placed subsequent to the conveyance would at best be established monuments and would depend upon principles of equity for their merit where they don't correspond to the clear language of the conveyance. I don't believe that a pleading in equity against the State is a big winner in most cases.
Where the contract language (the deed) specified that the boundary was to be in a certain place and some contruction contractor who wasn't a party to the original conveyance later placed a marker in some other location, what exactly would be the basis for a landowner claiming that, say, a strip of land that was described as being 100.00 ft. wide in the deed was really 95.00 ft. wide because that was where the contractor had installed the marker?
Essentially, proving up that claim would depend upon some principle of equity and would require a lawsuit to prevent the State from asserting its rights. In Texas, that would be a no-brainer not to waste time trying.
to both reinforce kent's point and to provide an exception to it: i won an argument with the state railroad commission attorneys (who, though forever now devotes approximately 99.7% of their energy to oil and gas and maybe the other .3% to railroad) and union pacific attorneys, which is to say i got them both to admit i was correct.
the section of railroad shown below lying between what is now SH130 and what is now Parmer Lane has about 8 zillion surveys done on either side of it over the past 35 years (wouldn't suspect that by looking at the aerial). almost every one of those surveys shows the railroad right-of-way varying from anywhere between 100' and 200'. i was working for a firm subcontracted by the DOT in the interesting of acquiring r.o.w. for 130, and my specific task at the time was, essentially, abstracting. at first i just accepted that people had conveyed off slivers to the I.&G.N. (or Mo-Kan or whoever). but i noticed none of the surveys- not a one- ever had a reference to any conveyance- only that they'd found monuments and that the railroad was 100' here, 110' there, 150' somewhere else. ended up chasing title all the way back. for both the railroad (which was a plain-as-day 100' conveyance) and to the original parent tract from which all these junior tracts had been severed. there wasn't a single conveyance to be found.
now, i couldn't care less who owned the underlying fee- that was the job for some other higher-totem guy. all i knew was that i couldn't find any evidence that the railroad had ever acquired title, the title company couldn't find any, and the railroad couldn't produce any evidence they had either. what became clear is that over time more and more people just conceded to fences and found pipes that only started showing up somewhere well after the original conveyance to the railroad. and i honestly don't know where any of it stands today, i suspect the varying width r.o.w. is still recognized by all those adjacent landowners due to the preponderance of surveys through there saying as much. but it was a great lesson - 15 years ago now- in the weight of monuments vs. the weight of title.
As a DOT employee myself, I could talk all day (and I often do!) regarding R/W monumentation.
All I will say here is that perhaps the best definition of "ROW Markers", is 'Right Or Wrong Markers'... I have seen instances where they fit very well, and other times they appeared to have been set with a rubber chain and kaleidoscope.
The Vermont Statutes Online
Title 19 : Highways
Chapter 001 : State Highway Law; General Transportation Provisions
(Cite as: 19 V.S.A. å¤ 32)
å¤ 32. Assumed width of right of way
A roadway width of one and one half rods on each side of the center of the existing traveled way can be assumed and controlled for highway purposes whenever the original survey was not properly recorded, or the records preserved, or if the terminations and boundaries cannot be determined. (Added 1985, No. 269 (Adj. Sess.), å¤ 1.)
Kent McMillan, post: 414655, member: 3 wrote: Well, what "original monument" means in the normal sense is a monument that the parties had in view at the time that the conveyance was made. Monuments placed subsequent to the conveyance would at best be established monuments and would depend upon principles of equity for their merit where they don't correspond to the clear language of the conveyance. I don't believe that a pleading in equity against the State is a big winner in most cases.
Where the contract language (the deed) specified that the boundary was to be in a certain place and some contruction contractor who wasn't a party to the original conveyance later placed a marker in some other location, what exactly would be the basis for a landowner claiming that, say, a strip of land that was described as being 100.00 ft. wide in the deed was really 95.00 ft. wide because that was where the contractor had installed the marker?
Essentially, proving up that claim would depend upon some principle of equity and would require a lawsuit to prevent the State from asserting its rights. In Texas, that would be a no-brainer not to waste time trying.
I think it is well established that monuments placed close to the time of conveyance are to be considered original. A surveyor is not anymore a "party to the conveyence" then the contractor. Both are agents of their client. The adjacent land owner has the same ability to protest the location of the monuments in both cases.
The monuments are usually set close to the time of the conveyence. I have seen many cases where the ROW monuments are actually set prior to the actual documents conveying the land being signed. I have even been in the field while DOT pointed to their monuments (set by a contractor) and told the land owner that they were the limit of their takings.
Are you saying that you would regect monuments that were set one year, or even two or three, after a land owner subdivided his land? Even if the two sides of the line were still owned by the parties to the original deed?
The governmet is treated differently than private land owners is some respects, but I have never seen a court differentiate between private rights and goverment rights when it comes to monumentation.
I really find it hard to belive that monuments set at the state's direction to mark the limits of their interest can be thrown out in favour of a mathematical solution based on distant control or the apparent centerline of a moving road.
If you can find any precident setting decision to the contrary I would appreciate it.
JPH, post: 414660, member: 6636 wrote: The Vermont Statutes Online
Title 19 : Highways
Chapter 001 : State Highway Law; General Transportation Provisions
(Cite as: 19 V.S.A. å¤ 32)
å¤ 32. Assumed width of right of wayA roadway width of one and one half rods on each side of the center of the existing traveled way can be assumed and controlled for highway purposes whenever the original survey was not properly recorded, or the records preserved, or if the terminations and boundaries cannot be determined. (Added 1985, No. 269 (Adj. Sess.), å¤ 1.)
That makes sence. If their are no records or any other way to determine the boundaries what else could you do?
Jp7191, post: 414532, member: 1617 wrote: P.s. To the punctuation and spelling nazis, kiss off.:)
Shouldn't the "s" in P.s. and the "n" in nazis be capitalized? (okay, sorry, kissing off...)
