Stumbled on this California Law Review from 1916.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BOUNDARY LINES
Discussion and review the law about practical location, acquiescence, agreement and adverse possession. I don't think that much has changed (in the law that is). This stuff is as old as the hills!
Hey the law is there and at this point easy to find and study. There is no excuse for a boundary surveyor at this point to not understand and apply the law, or worse to buck it through their organizations and boards. Society probably needs to find some one else to do this work. Someone willing to learn the law.
LRDay..
Good point. In the early 80’s, I discovered the local law library and was fortunate to have a good one at the county courthouse where I resided. Unfortunately many of the local surveyors at the time were too busy trying to survive in the profession to have time to study real property boundary law. Today with the internet there is no excuse to not be informed. The professional surveyor is continually looked or called upon for decisions regarding boundaries. Like the courts, he must look to past cases for guidance in present cases. It is always a judgment as to what the pivotal question is and what rule of law applies. In the case of measurements, surveyors given the same evidence generally come to similar conclusions. Where do the differences between surveyors originate? The biggest difference is in relating monuments to ownership or the inability of various surveyors to assign the proper evidentiary weight to each pertinent data and apply the appropriate rules. Keeping up with the rules (recent cases) is a never ending task, but much of the rules are old and precedential …. but always being revised and never boring! :-S :excruciating: :-O 🙂
Pablo B-)
Here is a Google books link to that issue of the California Law Review:
There are two articles regarding boundary establishment. The one Leon posted by a Los Angeles Lawyer is somewhat less friendly in tone to established boundaries. The other article by a San Francisco Lawyer is interesting too (Page 292, Samuel C. Wiel).
Most of the discussion is regarding the Agreed Boundary Doctrine which has had a checkered history in California. Our Courts have trended towards locking it down more in recent years. Personally I think California Land Surveyors should focus more on best evidence of the boundary and less on the Doctrines because our Courts have been so unfriendly to these Doctrines viewing them as a technical glitch in the law. It seems to me that when Superior Court Judges in California make a Boundary Judgement as a Fact question (rather than a Law question) then the Appellate Courts generally affirm that.
Thanks for the link Dave.
That's a great discussion on the subject. I really liked the part on the Doctrine of Repose, something I've yet to really understand but the discussion in the article explains it very well and how it evolved and why it's needed.
Wished I'd read all this about 10 years ago!
where will land surveying go from here?
Society probably needs to find some one else to do this work. Someone willing to learn the law.
worth a listen
scroll down to the 9/30/13 archive
where will land surveying go from here?
I've pretty much always agreed with Jeff Lucas.
In my territory surveyors have already been deemed irrelevant by the public. Pretty much the only time they will hire one is when required by some land use regulation. The reputation for, as Jeff puts it, "trampling property rights" is well known by the public and most landowners don't want a surveyor near their property. I can't go out without being stopped and questioned about what I'm doing and who's property I'm surveying (hoping its not their boundary). Some landowners that have already had a surveyor touch their lives will display some real hate towards a surveyor. There is no respect at all, I don't drive around with a sign on my truck expecting for it to do me some good (like getting shot at).
The real kicker is I think the public is right, surveyors shouldn't trample property rights. The public has no need for that.
where will land surveying go from here?
Leon, I agree.
Yesterday I was working for an elderly man that had bought property in Idaho because his cabin property in Utah had become over-run with "full-timers". He told me his story about having his Utah cabin property surveyed in 1970, built his cabin and other improvements based on that 1970 survey that "created" the parcel. Well, you can guess it, a few years ago his neighbor had his parcel surveyed, and predictably, the "new" survey run the parcel line through his kitchen.
As you know, we only have ourselves to blame for our present perception in the publics eye.
Anybody wonder why we cannot demand the respect and pay of other "true" professionals???? Yep, on the road to irrelevancy faster than ***** through a goose
where will land surveying go from here?
So did the "new" surveyor talk to this landowner before he ran the line through is cabin and file it in the county surveyor's office? Seems to me if he had talked to the guy he'd found out about the original survey, but sometimes even that can't tamp the math down. I mean the evil GPS made him do it, right?
I'm pretty seriously considering focusing my work on challenging other surveyors work, giving second opinions and informing landowners about the law. I don't think there is another way to right the ship.
where will land surveying go from here?
I didn't press the issue too much as I could see it was a very touchy subject to the elderly gentleman, but apparently the original surveyor didn't file the map with the Co. Surveyor and therefore, according to the "re-tracing surveyor", it wasn't valid and binding. Never heard that one before have you 😉
So, long story short, he did some "quit-claiming" with the neighbor, sold the property and bought 20 acres in the middle of "no-where" Idaho where he was hoping to not be bothered with such nonsense again. I wished him good luck.
