Fools who think they can measure

One current little project is a FUBAR situation.

Imagine a roughly square tract of about 40 acres.?ÿ In 1896 the first cutout was made, being so many rods by so many rods in the northwest corner of the 40.?ÿ My client acquired this tract over 20 years ago.?ÿ In about 2000 he acquired all of the remainder of the original tract less two exceptions based on surveys by a fellow who normally does very good work, mathematically.?ÿ A couple of years ago a fellow approached the client to purchase a small part of the tract he has owned for more than 20 years.?ÿ They went out and measured it themselves and wrote up their own description being so many rods by so many rods starting so many rods south of the northwest corner of the original tract.

Now, this fellow wishes to by an "L"-shaped tract to add onto the house tract he purchased a couple of years ago.

What could possibly go wrong?????

Research the heck out of this because it would be easy to find at least one problem with the descriptions versus apparent boundaries.?ÿ Study the surveys from about 2000 as no other work had been done on the original 40 +/- tract.

Search for and find most of the monuments mentioned is the 2000-era surveys and generally agree with the precision of the measurements.?ÿ Then I start to set the four corners of the tract that was severed in 1896.?ÿ Wait a minute.?ÿ Three of the sides seem fine but the east line is missing ancient occupation by 15 feet.?ÿ Stop right there.?ÿ Return to the courthouse to dig deeper.?ÿ Find the problem.?ÿ The city street centered on a Government lot line is 40' + 40', not 25' + 25' as reported by the surveyor in 2000.?ÿ OK. That solves the 15-foot issue, so that part looks great.?ÿ Turns out the 2000 surveyor ran lines around to what should be the southeast corner of the tract severed in 1896 but set it 15 feet to far west because of the wrong street width issue.?ÿ Then, as he ran a line north, he ran it parallel to the east side of the entire 40 instead of the west side of the entire 40 which was required to match the 1896 description.?ÿ This results in an overlap of the two descriptions ranging from 15 feet to roughly 8 feet at the north end.?ÿ To make matters worse, one exception description for a 60' by 70' tract owned by the City is overlapping such that it's only 60' by roughly 62'.?ÿ OOPS!?ÿ That puts a cloud on the north 60' of the tract I'm surveying plus there is a second cloud caused by surveyor error to the south of that.

But, the champion SCREW UP was committed by the client and buyer of the house tract a couple of years ago.?ÿ They started measuring south from the north side of a 30' street instead of the correct location at the south side of that street.?ÿ Then they started at the apparent center of the 80' street mentioned above instead of at the east line of the street.?ÿ They taped everything out using a tape measure then converted those measurements into rods for the description by dividing by the 15 feet in a rod factor.?ÿ Uh, fellows, there are 16.5 feet in a rod.

The end result is that a portion of the house tract needs to be deeded back to my client and a different-sized "L"-shaped tract will be deeded to the buyer by the client.?ÿ But, there are two clouds on the title caused by the 2000-era surveyor overlapping the east end of the tract going to the house owner.

Easy schmeasy.?ÿ Gotta love our work.