Ohio law and "reports" or survey descriptions

John,

I believe you are correct based on the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) Laws and the Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) Rules cited below. Each description must be complete within itself and may be used independent of any others included in a report. I would say that each description is therefore an independent "work product" under the ORC. The ORC section cited is the same section I have previously mentioned in posts regarding digital signatures.

ORC 4733.14 Certificate of registration - seals.

. . . Plans, specifications, plats, reports, and all other engineering or surveying work products issued by a registrant shall be stamped with the seal and be signed and dated by the registrant or bear a computer-generated seal and electronic signature and date, but no person shall stamp, seal, or sign any documents after the registration of the registrant named thereon has expired or the registration has been revoked or suspended, unless the registration has been renewed or reissued. (Emphasis added)

OAC 4733-37-06 Descriptions.

(A) When a surveyor is called upon to prepare a new description, either to replace an existing description which is inadequate or to create a new piece of property, said description shall include the following items:
. . . (5) The surveyor's name, Ohio registration number and date of writing and/or survey.
(E) When the surveyor knows a new description is to be used for a fee transfer, the surveyor shall base the description on a current or updated survey of the property.

If your buddy's 5 descriptions are all going to make their first appearance in the official records in a single legal document, then a single signature and seal seems OK. If they are headed for 2 or more legal documents, then it seems more seals/signatures are needed.
On the other hand, is there anything that says the signed and sealed original of the description must be part of the recorded doc? Could a title company, knowing they have a signed description on file, copy the description into the doc to be recorded?

that's an interesting question ...

as far as I'm concerned, if it's not in the official record, it's not "official", and it's certainly not a protected public record.

In some counties(Ohio), the tax map department has a folder for maps & descriptions ... some counties have file cabinets for maps & descriptions(in the tax map department) and still others have the surveys & descriptions in files(or boxes), at the county engineer's office ... sometimes the surveys are kept in the auditor's office and sometimes the surveys are kept while the descriptions are thrown away.

In any case, it rare ... very rare indeed, for the survey records to be kept in such a way that they might not be destroyed, lost, stolen or otherwise compromised. It's not rare for a non-compliant map to be placed in the records and the "promised" corrected survey never to make it to the same file/folder.

The keeping of records is very hap-hazard and very seldom "recorded".

Some counties in Ohio have interpreted the signature/sealing process to follow to the recorded instrument as an exhibit per Ohio laws and the need to show on the actual recorded instrument, that a surveyor did, indeed author and attested(by signing), the description within.

Other counties couldn't care less ...

The Ohio BOR and the state legislature has set up 88 fifedoms(KINGDOMS) in Ohio, where the more ambiguous pertinent laws are interpreted by public officials with absolutely outlandish, out of the mainstream reasoning ... other more specific laws are often just ignored.

By I'm wandering ...

So, most descriptions, which are required by law to be written by a professional survey, with a written signature, a written date and a seal, are replaced by a secretary and the map and/or description NEVER makes it into a truly bonafide, protected public record.

Long after the surveyor's gone(or before), a copy of a survey from any of the counties' stockpiles of surveys can be brought into question as to it's authenticity, simply because the records are not protected, and the filed instrument can not be "physically" connected to the surveyor ... because ... he/she didn't actually write the ONLY aspect of his/her work that is actually filed ... hearsay ...

The actual signed description should, at the least be placed within the filed document(as an exhibit, if need be), and in all seriousness, since the map is an integral part of the whole thing, the county recorder should also require that the signed/sealed map also be recorded in a "maintained record" ... ONLY THEN would it actually be a record that remains protected and available to the public.

Oh ... sorry ...

There are five descriptions involved in one part of this transaction and two more in another part of this transaction.

Since it was strongly suggested(to the surveyor), to put all the descriptions together(that is 5 descriptions and two descriptions), and I am doing this for the surveyor, I just made sure that no individual description ends at the bottom of a page ... in other words there always must be another, numbered page to follow, UNTIL the last page, which has the signature and seal.

In my practice, I NEVER would have done this, I ALWAYS made each description it's own page with it's own signature, with it's own date and with it's own seal.

Without the signatures and seals terminating the page/description, what keeps a person from innocently(but maybe incorrectly), "changing" one of the middle pages? At least the signature & seal cannot be replaced without a larcenous thought.

Kinda like not leaving blank spaces in a will, which is slightly better than leaving an entire blank page in a will.

Fascinating

99 percent of my descriptions appear on the survey plat. Someone typing a deed or other document to be filed has the pleasure of attempting to match every letter and symbol as they create the document they need. There is no separate category for recording only a description prepared by a licensed land surveyor other than as a "miscellaneous" document indexed to a specific property.

Thus, I might have 10 different descriptions all on one plat, but nowhere else.