> When you find a monument you don't agree with, you need to man up and set your own monument, or go ahead and accept what you find. Calling found monuments off by a few fractions of a feet is wussing out.
And is no different than setting another monument. It is essentially another form of pincushion.
> Monuments don't outweigh intent. If the monument was the intent...it would be called for in a document or map. ie..."100 feet to a monument" if the monument is 100.5 feet then the line is 100.5 feet. But if I have a deed that calls "South 59deg West 100 feet to apoint" and there is a monument 100.5 feet on that line and the deed predates the monument...the intent at the time of conveyance was 100 feet not 100.5 feet.
>
> Now there may be other legal factors that may play into this such as Adverse possession, acquiescence, etc. But those are legal matters for attorneys to work out...I may advise my client on them but the documents say the line is 100 feet.
That is called deed staking, not surveying.
Thanks, I feel a little better knowing others feel my pain. Now, that morning therapy is over and the coffee is gone, off to set some corners. Not going near any state land, so I should be okay. 😉
It depends
"Unprofessional"..."license revoked"..."incompetence"...hmmm?
While surveying a lot in the city you find four monuments roughly where you'd expect them to be. After computing an inverse between a couple of these monuments, it appears a wall of the $4M office building (built in 1950) located thereon crosses this line by .07'.
Roll me in pigstuff and call me Goofy. 😛
It's worse than a pincushion. At least with a pincushion, there is a monument on the ground that represents your opinion of the corner. If you just call the existing monument as off, there's nothing, only a fictional point.
Well, they aren't surveying.
You are right there...I'll give you that but if you have an old map with 50x100 foot lots and a labeled 500 foot block size...that was what they intended.
Here is a typical map from our area...also note that it calls for monuments...none has ever been found and a couple of guys have even brought out excavators. About 75% of deeds in the area just call out the lot on the map and have since the mid 1800's when this map was made.
If anyone recognizes this...there is a lot more going on in this area and with this map than I am going to get into here...there are a number of guys who won't even work in this area.
:good:
It comes down to intent...what was the intent. If the lot was originally sold off at 100.00 feet then that is the amount of real property that was sold. Most lots even today in are not staked in subdivisions. Four of five monuments for 100 lots is how it usually works. 99% of the pins found are set by resurvey. If the resurvey rebar that was not set at the time of the map or original conveyance is 100.1 then that person does not get 100.1 feet simply because someones traverse was off of they used a bad prism constant.
Tom
In the six places I have worked locally and in my experience around here...very few people stake unless paid to do it. Most attorneys specifically ask for no stakes to keep costs down.
Your state standards of practice allow that?
> It comes down to intent...what was the intent.
No, it comes down to reliance. There is a reason that a monument was discovered where it is. Someone paid a professional surveyor to monument their corners. There is a presumption that the recovered monument is the corner until you can prove that it isn't. That proof better be more than "the deed called for 100' and it measured 100.1'".
Yes, it is about intent. The surveyor who set a monument intended the monument to represent the corner and the owner who bought the lot thought the corners were intended to be represented by monuments set by a surveyor, not a theoretical measurement on a map.
It depends
it must have been a party wall. adjoining building was torn down in 1960.
It depends
Nope, been vacant since 1932 and listed @ $2M for the last 20 years...
It depends
So they just built it over the line. What has everyone been relying on? how did you locate the building corner? Is the building Plumb? How did you locate the corner of the building? there are so many questions about methods and usage. All of us will never agree on the same decision. Maybe this building has an adverse claim?? not for me to decide.
I just report the facts as i find them. Here are the pins found at the corners, and here is the building in relation to the corners.
It depends
> If this was a 100 acre tract on the side of a hill - I agree.
>
> On the other hand if this were in a city or a well monumented subdivision where values are $10,000 a front foot I'd be concerned. Or where these increments could have an effect on minimum widths or areas I'd be concerned.
>
> Of course I want to make sure my techniques and procedures would justify this.
>
> And don't tell me no one would worry about this. I work in jurisdictions where the bureaucrats would say that 9,999 square feet is not good enough for a 10,000 square foot lot - and I agree. A line in the sand is a line in the sand.
First off, if a lot is non-conforming it was non-conforming before the surveyor ever set foot on the property.
Second off, I would love to see case cites where the courts differentiate the elements of boundary law between parcels on a hillside and parcels in cities. I'd really like to see the case (or statutory) law that requires the value of the land be a controlling piece of evidence in determining where the boundary line is located. Yes, risk analysis should be part of the decision making process of the surveyor, but only in the decision of whether to take the job at a particular price or not. If you are uncomfortable with your boundary determination because of the $$$$ value of the land involved, then either find more evidence, terminate the contract, or really reconsider your "value pricing" strategy.
FTT - I really hope you are being sarcastic..........
:good:
I'm not going to change long established lines based on a pin that I know nothing about, who set it? Was it a surveyor or a homeowner who got lucky? What equipment were they using, was it calibrated? What did they hold to stake that? Did they check their traverse? Did they close a loop? How good was their rodman or IP?
Again...if I have a 500 foot block on a 200 year old map with 50 foot lots and the deeds call out lot XX on map XXX...and I find two pins in the front of my lot that measure 50.5 feet, that pin does not mean that one person owns 50.5 and another owns 49.5 when the original mapping called for 50 feet each and we can be confident that it is not an original pin. If the pins were original and/or called for it would be a different story.
From Bruckner (and many others) "Monuments must be identifiable as the originals, undisturbed, called for, and in the proximity as described, in order to be controlling."
If you are relying only field location of pins based on re-survey you are missing evidence. Deeds, maps, etc are legal documents and are evidence and can control over monuments if they are not original or called for.
Here's an example that we went to court over and won a bunch of years back (with a previous firm
).
Property owner "A" and "B" are fighting over a line...only about 0.5' but they hate each other. The neighbor had a pin where he said the line was and a pin at the other side of his lot. They measured correctly to the deed distance within about 0.05 feet or so. Our client found a pipe at the other end of his yard and he measured his deed distance 6" past the pin his neighbor was claiming. After a complete and well paid for survey we found through the deeds and chains of title that our clients property was the first conveyed out of the original larger parcel and the neighbors was conveyed about 6 years later (there were about a dozen parcels from the original). The pin found between the lots was old...but not 120 years old (when the conveyances were made). The pipe we found was called for in some old deeds about 25 years after the conveyance...the pin was not called for in anything (neither of the neighbors pins were called). We held the deed distance from the pipe and threw out the pin. It held up in court. The deed distance held over the pin because 1) it was not called for 2) it was not original and 3) we had senior rights. All this is from the deeds...
Bottom line is that you have to look at all the evidence including maps and deeds. Sometimes the pin doesn't hold based on other evidence.
Tom