Like Kliban (posted by me yesterday) this Court affirmed the trial court decision. This case has a similar fact set although it is in a much newer Orange County neighborhood.
This decision is interesting in that it contains a lot more discussion and explanation. For example, they explain that the Substantial evidence rule applies to their review of whether the Agreed Boundary Doctrine applies. They review the record to see if the Trial Court's decision is based upon substantial evidence and they defer to the Trial Court in certain things such as inferences drawn. It seems that the Trial Courts are in the driver's seat generally when it comes to application of the Agreed Boundary Doctrine unless they really blow it badly.
I only read down to where they discuss the Discovery Rule; the Statute of Limitations doesn't start to run until the injured party discovers the problem.
Hoggatt v. Pezdek, California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, 2011:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=Hoggatt+v.+Pezdek&hl=en&as_sdt=2,5&case=11757679582822094360&scilh=0
This court appears to hold Pezdek to a standard of objective uncertainty, among other things.
> Like Kliban (posted by me yesterday) this Court affirmed the trial court decision. This case has a similar fact set although it is in a much newer Orange County neighborhood.
An intelligent decision on principles that modern jurisprudence everywhere should follow.
>"Under circumstances where the trial court could infer Hawthorne and Pezdek did not resolve any boundary issue by building the fence, and the fence was not built for that reason, it was entitled to conclude the men's agreement was merely intended to fix the location of the fence, which would serve as a barrier, not as a boundary."
Separating agreements as to fences from agreements as to boundaries makes perfect sense in the context of a well-surveyed residential subdivision where a surveyor can ascertain the original boundaries with relative certainty.
This illustrates two types of these cases.
Those that require objective uncertainty, and those that don't.
We have plenty of both.
Just as a matter of curiosity, what injury would be done if the California legislature enacted a law that specifically provided that after some particular date all boundary agreements must be in writing and duly recorded, and that all verbal agreements as to land boundaries were unenforceable against subsequent owners of the adjoining lands?
I don't think a Statute could undo existing private boundary agreements.
A Statute could be passed that would require boundary agreements to be in writing after a certain date. Another ploy would be to have oral agreements only be enforceable as to their parties, similar to unrecorded Deeds.
I don't get all that bent out of shape by the foolishness private parties undertake as to their boundaries, too cheap to get a survey? okay by me. People have a right to be stupid, I guess.
I wouldn't discount the fact that the court noted in it's decision that Pezdek, the Appellant, called the Plaintiff's wife a "f*****g g**k", which behavior, along with other apparently recorded and witnessed events, resulted in a restraining order against Pezdek prior to this case.
> I don't think a Statute could undo existing private boundary agreements.
Sure, it would operate in a similar way to the recording statute that requires conveyances of certain interests in land to be in writing and recorded to be binding against third parties. You wouldn't make the law retrospective, but would set a date after which no one could plead a boundary had been established by oral agreement unless the agreement had occurred prior to that date, the idea being to preserve the pleading for old boundaries and remove it going forward.
> A Statute could be passed that would require boundary agreements to be in writing after a certain date. Another ploy would be to have oral agreements only be enforceable as to their parties, similar to unrecorded Deeds.
> I don't get all that bent out of shape by the foolishness private parties undertake as to their boundaries, too cheap to get a survey? okay by me. People have a right to be stupid, I guess.
Yes, but not to waste the courts's time on their foolishness.
Anybody that thinks they can write a statute to override hundreds of years of common law (and all the thought that went into it) and actually do society good is dreaming. The best a statute could do is codify the existing common law, not undo it. For bunch of surveyors to suppose they know more than hundreds of years of courts is ludicrous!
> The best a statute could do is codify the existing common law, not undo it.
I assume you're kidding, right?
The Armitage case similarly involves bad behavior by Armitage, an Attorney. They came down hard on him.
I doubt it is a serious possibility.
The danger would be to undermine existing agreements which involve substantial improvements such as buildings versus simply a few feet of fenced weeds.
> The danger would be to undermine existing agreements which involve substantial improvements such as buildings versus simply a few feet of fenced weeds.
Well, where is the danger in making a law that any verbal boundary agreement alleged to have been made after March 10, 2013 shall be null and void as to any third parties? That isn't retrospective. A boundary can still be alleged to have been fixed by verbal agreement at some prior time, but it puts the public on notice that in the future they need to put it all in writing and record it.
Naturally, hiring an attorney to reduce agreements to writing in a form suitable for recordation will probably cost more than a survey and the parties will suddenly realize that surveyors don't really cost that much after all. Shazzam!
To do what you want to do the answer is title registration (Torrens Title). Then all the parcels are surveyed, adjudicated and the boundaries thereafter guaranteed by the state and thence fixed in position. It's been tried in the US but just didn't stick in most places. Maybe with the current GIS mapping capability they could make it work (if the money arrives for deep space). Until then I think the common law is just fine. Let the landowners have domain over their boundaries. They could have it properly surveyed (or could have) but the don't or they didn't. After that other equitable solutions kick in as developed by common law. Maybe at some point the reality of how boundaries are kept track of will catch up with our math but until then (about when hell freezes over) the common sense of our common law works just fine.
The more I read and study common law the more respect I have for it!
> To do what you want to do the answer is title registration (Torrens Title).
Not really. If you remove verbal agreements as a means for adjoining landowners to jerry-rig a boundary that their successors can argue about, it means they just call a surveyor as they should have done in the first place. In all of the modern cases that I'll bet Dave Karoly will ever be able to cite in which some verbal agreement was thought by the parties at the time to be less expensive than having a survey made, it turned out not to be in the long run, and probably by a factor of more than 50.
> To do what you want to do the answer is title registration (Torrens Title). Then all the parcels are surveyed, adjudicated and the boundaries thereafter guaranteed by the state and thence fixed in position.
One small point:
With Torrens Title, just because the state guarantees the title does not mean the boundaries have to be fixed in position.
The NZ system allows for movement: crustal; accretion; evulsion; erosion etc.
We do not fix a boundary by coordinates - the earth moves, boundaries likewise