I see stuff from time to time that looks as if it ought to end up in litigation someday, and sometimes I have even posted a thread discussing the topic. Today was a red letter day, however, I had a call from an attorney wanting to retain me as an expert witness in a lawsuit that actually involved three entirely different threads, posted more than a year apart on this and another message board elsewhere in cyberspace, and all three topics connected by the same case!
He'd been referred to me by another attorney and once we dealt with the question of any conflict of interest and he started describing the subject matter of the case, I realized that every bit of it was familiar. Partly, it's the result of having concentrated work in certain areas and partly it's just the luck of the draw. To complete the trifecta, when the call was over, I headed out into the field to locate a corner that I'd been planning to tie and it happened to be one also perfectly relevant to an issue of the lawsuit. It was an odd alignment of the stars today.
It appears you stepped into what G W did not.
Paul in PA
Kent
Don't waste the day. Go buy a lotto ticket and kick back with a beer and bbq and pat yourself on the back. You've earned it.
Congratulations on what sounds as if it will be a very lucrative case with very little overhead.
Kent
> Don't waste the day. Go buy a lotto ticket and kick back with a beer and bbq and pat yourself on the back. You've earned it.
Actually, after tying one more corner of the 1877 subdivision that fell on the original land grant line, rather than taking the rest of the day off, we went to did some big holes in about 14 inches of road base looking for another corner that had been reported as recently as 1890, after the road was opened, as being marked by a set stone. No joy, but I did get to use that piece of exercise equipment known as a rock bar.
Kent
"You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!"
Kent
I did two holes through asphalt and plenty of base yesterday, by hand, and it kicked my rear. Plenty of free exercise for sure.
Kent
>"You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!"
Well, it isn't quite Twilight Zone material. One of the issues of the case is where the original survey lines really (opposed to "ostensibly") run, and that is one of those puzzles that has been unraveled as an incidental result of years of work, all now tied together by the SPCS. The other and main issue appears to simply be garden variety professional negligence which in this case is a clear cut one of fenceline surveying in gross violation of the mininum technical standards.
Kent
Keep us posted, if you can.
This sounds like it would be a VG McMillan vs. Schaut smack down for our enjoyment....I mean edification
🙂
Kent
> >"You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!"
>
> Well, it isn't quite Twilight Zone material. One of the issues of the case is where the original survey lines really (opposed to "ostensibly") run, and that is one of those puzzles that has been unraveled as an incidental result of years of work, all now tied together by the SPCS. The other and main issue appears to simply be garden variety professional negligence which in this case is a clear cut one of fenceline surveying in gross violation of the mininum technical standards.
Although not classic Twilight Zone material, I did take note of the "odd alignment of the stars" and the coincidence of it all, or is it?
Kent
> I did two holes through asphalt and plenty of base yesterday, by hand, and it kicked my rear.
Colorful metaphor. I trust you have a rock bar. If not, would recommend.
Kent
LOL.
I have something I call a pinch bar. Didn't have it in the truck tho, so both holes were made with a combination of pickaxe and sharpshooter. Shiny new client asphalt too, so I had to keep them as small as possible.
Andy
That's why I keep a coffee can of cold patch in the truck. I make them as big as I need, and fill up the can when done from a local entity that has cold patch on hand.
🙂
Kent
Sounds like you'd have been better off with the beer and bbq. 😛
Just funnin' ya. You gotta look, and not every time is there joy to be had in mudville.
Better luck next time.
Andy
> That's why I keep a coffee can of cold patch in the truck. I make them as big as I need, and fill up the can when done from a local entity that has cold patch on hand.
Hmm. We dug two holes through 14 inches of road base yesterday. The top 8 inches was modern manufactured base and the bottom 6 was pit-run gravel with natural limestone fines. Below that, there was about 12 inches of black clay to a hardpan layer of cemented natural alluvial gravel. One hole was about 3' x 4' and the other about 3' x 3', each representing a different theory of reconstruction of the 1877 survey. The digging wasn't as bad as the not-finding.
How many coffee cans of cold patch would it have taken?
Kent
That would have taken one call to my supplier and I would have had a 5 gallon bucket of it.
The patch goes back on top once the base material goes back in.
I'm talking about small holes.
For big holes, (which I don't dig very many of in roads) I'll use more cold patch.
Kent
> This sounds like it would be a VG McMillan vs. Schaut smack down for our enjoyment....I mean edification
I previously posted some of the details of the fenceline surveyor who didn't even bother to pull any deeds of adjoining owners. After all, there was a fence, right? All his field party needed to do was just look around the fence corners for anything that looked as if a surveyor had set it and he'd have it knocked, right?
Kent
> I have something I call a pinch bar.
In West Texas, I'd call it a "San Angelo bar", if it's what is called a "rock bar" elsewhere.