Norm,
Darned good question!
The office that completed the resurvey is the BLM Eastern States Office and their address can be found at the BLM web page... BLM
I couldn't advise one way or the other on what action they would take.
And of course it does not cost anything and you will get an answer.
It would be something of a precedence if in fact BLM were to amend a resurvey that is the reason for a court case that ended up in the Federal Appeals Court in Florida.
Keith
Perhaps if there is interest locally about contacting the BLM re the W 1/4 corner there may be enough supporting evidence to ammend the corner. There is more information needed in Section 16 on what point of control was used for the hiway and the parcels nearby. It looks to me like chances are the local surveyors are not using the 1982 corner anyway. The same thing happened here at the Indian Settlement. The resurvey came to town and no one paid any heed. The local surveyors kept using the county surveyors stones they had always used. I'll bet a dime the same thing is happening here.
If there are local surveyors that are reading this thread, it would be good if they spoke up!
Of course, the whole point it to have Lane or somebody from the BLM Eastern States Office explain the facts to us.
But, that did not happen.
This Court case has to be one of the worst ones that I have ever read and is based on bogus information.
Keith
The next issue is how sec. 15 was subdivided and by who?
So far we have not seen the survey plat or field notes of the "survey" of these lines.
Was this survey performed by a Forest Service surveyor?
I am not sure.
Are there surveys recorded locally that would have a survey by the Forest Service?
Keith
Maybe it is timely and appropriate to bring up another little matter in this abominable resurvey and court case.
I do believe that the interior section subdivision lines were completed by a Forest Service surveyor and of course if in fact I was advising the attorneys on the other side; my first question would be: Where is the Federal authority for the Forest Service to survey Public land boundaries? Next question: if in fact the Forest Service surveyor is surveying private land under his/her State license; who are the private land owners that requested their land to be surveyed? Next question; does the Forest Service have the authority and opinion to survey section subdivision lines and ignore existing private survey monuments?
Now some of this, I am just supposing.............since no government official is willing to come on here and tell us the facts.
I also only hear by rumor that the former Forest Service surveyor Walt Robillard does state that the procedures to survey the section subdivision lines is by Chapter 3 of the Manual and ignore existing private survey monuments.
It should be easy for somebody to show that I am wrong....or not!
We could all learn what the facts are if they were simply posted here....like the plat and the field notes of the section subdivision of section 15.
I want to see them.
Keith
> Maybe it is timely and appropriate to bring up another little matter in this abominable resurvey and court case.
I rather think that this thread has lost its way. At the heart of the Lucas article is Rivers v. Lozeau, and the essential question at issue in Rivers is not the veracity of the BLM's dependent resurvey, but whether or not monuments placed by surveyor Moorhead at about the time the parcel line was created had the dignity of original monuments, as if called for in the deed. The question came to light because of a private survey (by Britt, in 1986) that followed the BLM resurvey (1982), but, in an alternate reality, may have been triggered by any number of other things.
The legal descriptions of the contested boundary line in each adjoiners deed were compatible, each clearly describing, in their own way, a line 400 feet south of and parallel to the north line of SE 1/4 of the SW 1/4. At the time of trial there had been monuments in place for 25 years that were well known to all parties and relied upon from the start. Using logic that is not described in the decision, and which I cannot concieve, the trial court ruled that there was a overlap. Furthermore, the appeals court seems to say that these quarter/quarter lines were run out on the ground by the BLM. I'm not sure if this is so, or if the language used in the decision is just confused.
The Florida Appeals court ruled that the 400 foot dimension in the deed held over the "original" surveyor's monuments. It also acknowledged, in a footnote, that if the deeds had called out the monuments the decision would have been a very different one.
So you guys can go on questioning the BLM's survey and maybe with good reason, but it misses the point. Moorhead's monumentation of the external boundary of the parent parcel (being quarter/quarter lines) was trumped by the subsequent dependent resurvey by the BLM and his monumentation of the division line was trumped by the dimensions in the description.
Thank you, Mark. The thread went off in a strange direction almost immediately which is probably why Mr. Lucas stopped commenting. It was a good discussion, but completely off the point.
Mark,
You mostly are right and I see it a little differently.
I have had real problems with the method that BLM restored the west 1/4 sec. cor. of sec. 15 at proportionate distance(???) and ended up a chain and a half south of a supposedly midpoint and another monument supposedly for the 1/4 cor.
Then, the section subdivision lines were run into this BLM proportioned 1/4 sec. cor. that is a chain and a half south of where it probably should be, and the section subdivision lines ignored the existing sec. subd. cor. monuments.........on which the private land had been using. Obviously, the east-west lines were pulled down considerably to the south and created the problem.
There was not a problem before this.
At least that is how I see it and of course if somebody would post the sec. subd. lines of sec. 15, (with field notes), we all could see if I am right or not.
Keith
prior,
If Lucas commented here, I missed it??
Keith
You are correct that court never really addressed the differences between the Moorhead survey and the Britt Survey (based on the BLM resurvey). All they said was that the BLM resurvey "Made Obvious" that the Moorhead survey was wrong, and the Britt Survey was correct. That, IMO, is the 1st and biggest mistake made in this court case. Perhaps, if the people involved had questioned the Britt/BLM surveys, it would have been made obvious that the court case should not have been between the two private land owners.
But as you point out, that's all water under the bridge at this point. You basically have bad case law (which gets a lot of attention, for some reason) resulting from bad surveying. The surveyors gave the court system crap to work with and this is the result.
Pseudo,
You are right and like I have said before, the other side did not show up!!
I would have liked to be there as an expert witness to go over the surveys/resurveys and show where the problem came from.
This is the truth for sure: You basically have bad case law (which gets a lot of attention, for some reason) resulting from bad surveying. The surveyors gave the court system crap to work with and this is the result.
What do you suppose would happen if BLM decided they were wrong and changed their resurvey?
Would that be a HOOT?
Keith
Sorry, Keith
I should have clarified. He responded to the original thread on the other site.
Don
> ... You basically have bad case law ...
I'm not so sure the conclusions of the case are wrong, or at least that they contradict any other case law, particularly with regards to the 400 foot division line that was actually at issue. I have challenged the contributors to this board (and the other) to show me the case law to support this "first surveyor" concept and have been offered none. Dykes v. Arnold may be such a case, but that involved a monument at the center of section that was established by an elected county surveyor over a hundred years prior.
> I have had real problems with the method that BLM restored the west 1/4 sec. cor. of sec. 15 at proportionate distance(???) and ended up a chain and a half south of a supposedly midpoint and another monument supposedly for the 1/4 cor.
It may well be that this dependent resurvey was not the BLM's brightest moment, and I understand why that is important to you. What is important to me is the court's ideas regarding the "first surveyor" concept.
The courts do not accept the idea. The BLM promotes it, then ignores it when it is inconvenient. Surveyors cling to it, but it is a ghost.
Mark,
I am not sure what you are saying here?
For starters, I would point out the Appeals Court case in your area. The Dykes case.
Are you saying that the "first surveyor" is not valid and that the section has to be surveyed in accordance only with Chapter 3 of the 1973 Manual?
Please clarifly.
Keith
I believe the Oregon case and the FL case site some of the same quotations with respect to the original lines cannot change. The FL court was convinced the original line was was dependent on the position of the resurvey. The Oregon court was convince the original line was the line first established on the ground. Both courts believed they had correctly defended the original survey based on the arguments they heard.
> For starters, I would point out the Appeals Court case in your area. The Dykes case.
I referenced that myself.
> Are you saying that the "first surveyor" is not valid ...?
Lucas is saying that.
Myself, I am not much concerned with resurvey of sections in my practice. County surveyors do almost all of the maintenance of the PLSS cadaster in my area and most of the land title traces back to Donation Land Claims anyway.
I am concerned with the effect of the local surveyors work in staking out property descriptions. Does a monument, not called for in a deed, hold when, and because, it is the first monument set? The issue at bar in the Rivers case was the boundary between Rivers and Lozeau, which was 400 feet south of the quarter/quarter line. The location of the quarter/quarter line itself had a bearing (no pun intended), but was not the direct issue the court was asked to address. The intent of the deed was to convey the north 400 feet of the quarter/quarter, no matter where that might be. The Moorhead survey did not fix the boundaries in place.
Of note is that AP was not argued. Why not? The monuments and a fence had been in place for 25 years. I don't know the AP laws of Florida, but the SOL can't be that long there, can it? So there must have been another reason. Probably there was little or no reliance on the Moorhead survey in the rest of the section, and little or no acts of occupation in the vicinity of the fences. The GIS photos that have been posted suggest swampy ground.
Although not specifically stated in the Oregon Court's decision Dykes may be a special case because it is a center of section, because it was set by an elected county official, and because it was relied on by many others for an extended period of time. I think this last element was probably the most important. It does appear to differ with Rivers. So we have two cases in 20 years from opposite ends of the country that differ. That doesn't make Rivers, or Dykes, "bad law". It makes an issue in the balance. Show me more.
Mark,
I really did not think that it is an argument about accepting valid existing survey monuments within a section of the PLSS, that has been accepted and used. If in fact you are the "next" surveyor in the section, it would seem logical to me to use the retracement/resurvey procedures in the Manual, rather than only Chapter 3, which is the guidelines for the "first surveyor".
Show us your cases to show this concept wrong.
Keith
Mark,
If Lucas said that the "first surveyor" is not valid; you will have to quote that as I must have missed it.
Thanks.
Keith
Mark,
I think anyone who has worked in the PLSS can agree that it's near impossible to restore a lost PLSS corner to its exact original position with any degree of certainty. For example, I'd argue that any monument set by single or double proportion is not reset back to its original position. It may be close, but not exact. The court acted as if the 1982 resurvey was a flawless retracement of the 1835 survey, which I don't believe to be the case. Secondly, the court opined that quarter-quarter section lines are fixed in placed by the original survey, even if not actually surveyed, and these lines are "unchangeable and control all references in deeds". There is quite a disconnect there from reality.
Now look at this resurvey. It looks like single and double proportion all over the place. Even if you throw out the seemingly glaring error regarding the W1/4 corner, you still have multiple corners restored in a position that may be close to, but not exactly at, the original position.
The land was subdivided, monumented, and occupied in accordance with the best available evidence at the time. Then, in 1982, the resurvey and what may have been a bad decision by a government surveyor resulted in boundaries being up heaved. This court decision is a bit short sighted in that it codifies a concept where every interior lot division is subject to change at some future date based on the results of future government survey work. It’s basically saying that any change to exterior section lines (i.e., a government surveyor doesn’t agree with the monuments that have been relied on by the local surveyors for 100+ years) results in all surveys and monuments within the section to change, as well.
Keep in mind that any aliquot parts descriptions in an entire section technically rely on all 4 quarter corners. So just one 1/4 corner can affect any property over a 2 square mile area. In essence, this court is saying that any surveys, monuments, and fences in section 15 or 16 that relied on the (“unproved”) W1/4 corner near the midpoint, in the State Road, are wrong and should be changed.
To me, that’s bad case law.