That's good, Kent!! Hopefully you use country appraisal district information -- for what it is worth.
Now, the remaining problem is how do you trace the chain-of-title for a vacancy?
The answer is: you don't.
If the State of Texas learns about the vacancy, they may sell it, and the chain-of-title
starts for the vacancy. Usually, the State assigns a scrap file number to the vacancy.
How do I know your area in question was a vacancy? It's complicated. It involves
a comparison of three State of Texas databases. You can use the identify query
in the GLO Public Viewer or the RRC viewer. However, most of the time, you will
come up with some cryptic abstract number as the result.
Good luck!!!
I have seen excesses in several cases where the original survey was not subdivided,
mostly in surveys that fronted on wide and shallow river beds.
> I have seen excesses in several cases where the original survey was not subdivided,
> mostly in surveys that fronted on wide and shallow river beds.
Well, excess acreage in an original survey is actually quite common. It doesn't matter whether the original survey has been subdivided or not. The owner of any tract, even a 0.25 acre lot, out of an original survey with excess can still apply to purchase the excess and to receive a deed of acquittance. Since the purchase price in that scenario is based upon the market value of the land, you can see how buying all the excess acres in some nominal 640 acre section could run into the tens of millions of dollars or more in the case of valuable urban property. Who would want to be the surveyor who didn't advise the parties of that one coming?
That is the title company's problem -- although I am sure an attorney would attach me to the lawsuit.
three.rivers
I know surveyors who do all of the well location work, stake the boundaries of the lease,
locate the boundary of the original surveys, and then turn their well location plat over
to the oil company for some employee to sign.
Some of those surveyors post to this board. The liability for a bad location could put
you out of business.
> That is the title company's problem -- although I am sure an attorney would attach me to the lawsuit.
Sure, of course the title company's attorneys would. Much better practice to state that either (a) you offer no assurance as to the existence or non-existence of excess acreage in the original survey(s) out of which the tract comes or (b) to show the actual acreage of the original survey.
One of the commonest mistakes I see is that made by a surveyor who is surveying a ranch and doesn't bother to do any sort of study of the original surveys that make up the ranch, as if all the facts connected with the original surveys somehow disappeared when they were all combined and sold as a ranch.
Good ideas!!
three.rivers
> I've seen many RRC location plats that were signed by Landman with scaled ties to survey lines. I have somewhat of a problem with that. I would'nt have a problem if there was no signature. It appears to the layman that landmen have expertise in that field and we all know that do not.
I remember seeing well location plat signed by SIT's who hadn't received their license yet.
three.rivers
As you know, the surveyors have gone up against the oil company lobby to get
this requirement changed to RPLS signature only.
The real loser is the RRC and the State of Texas because excess acreages could
generate extra revenue. I am not interested in complicating matters, especially
for oil companies.
I have heard a surveyor or two say the oil companies will not hire a LSLS because
he might be anxious to report a vacancy.
I have seen a couple cases worked by LSLS where vacancies were thought to exist
but didn't. The titles were both clouded and the oil companies abandoned the
locations.
three.rivers
It's not that a LSLS would be anxious to report a vacancy; they are legally bound to report it. I suppose some oil companies may do their homework and avoid the LSLS based on the potential for a vacancy to pop up, but I do some well staking and have never had anyone bring up the issue.
Kent, Kent, Kent...
There you go again...Everyone and their brother, cousin and lost long auntie has a GIS system based on any number of maps and/or photos. I heard of one in Canada that was based on survey data but that sounds more like some poorly constructed hoax designed to quash the dreams of naive surveyors. The original Pima County GIS was first corrected to the photo using spandex. With such a propitious beginning, how could they go wrong?
It is a very basic research tool for surveyors but not much more. It is also a good source of revenue generated by those fools that look at the lines superimposed on the photos and run over to their neighbor's house waving a printout....
> The original Pima County GIS was first corrected to the photo using spandex. With such a propitious beginning, how could they go wrong?
> It is a very basic research tool for surveyors but not much more. It is also a good source of revenue generated by those fools that look at the lines superimposed on the photos and run over to their neighbor's house waving a printout....
Yes, I know it's recklessly idealistic of me to think that a GIS should not be a map of Bizarro World where everything is different. That particular case in Dimmit County is striking because of the resistance to correcting the map to show that a survey actually exists that been disappeared on the GLO County map and in their GIS, and likewise on the Railroad Commission GIS.
I don't care about extreme spatial accuracy. We're talking topology if the GIS shows two surveys adjoining each other when there actually is a strip of land about 1060 ft. wide lying between them upon which a patent was issued. If you can't get the topology right in a GIS, what's next? Sea dragons?
GIS maintenance and tweaking line work is very expensive.
The land surveyor does it every day in a very small area.
Maybe Dimmit County is too busy, but I know three tax appraisal districts
who are moving their abstract corners to the existing occupation shown on
aerial photography.
You get all of this free GIS data -- DLG, DEM, GLO, TX RRC, and TNRIS.
Then, the politicians think they do no need to pay for accurate data.
> How do I know your area in question was a vacancy? It's complicated. It involves
> a comparison of three State of Texas databases. You can use the identify query
> in the GLO Public Viewer or the RRC viewer. However, most of the time, you will
> come up with some cryptic abstract number as the result.
I've been discussing this matter with you as if you were a Texas surveyor, but I gather from your comment you just posted that you most likely are not. Here is how vacancies are identified. First, you begin with a study of the field notes of the original surveys that have been made in the area of interest. In this particular case, that study will reveal that the surveys on either side of the gap shown on the GLO official county map are part of what in Texas law is called a survey "system", a series of interconnected surveys all located by the same surveyor in an operation that continued from day to day and weeek to week.
As a settled matter of law it's not possible that there is a vacancy between two surveys in the same system tied together by adjoiner calls. End of report.
So, given that the vacancy *cannot* exist, what is a person to conclude other than that the blank space on the GLO County Map and the associated FUBARs that have spun out into a multitude of GIS maps are merely stupid chaos?
Your comment;
As a settled matter of law it's not possible that there is a vacancy between two surveys in the same system tied together by adjoiner calls.
Can you cite a course case?
Mistakenly calling for an adjoiner must happen less than you think. It happens more in modern day surveying
because survey companies sent out different crews. I could show you a situation where an original surveyor
in Atascosa County laid out original surveys over the course of several years. Maybe he had one of your 'systems'.
He made an bad call for an adjoiner next to a survey he had completed a few years before. Like most surveyors,
we all make mistakes.
There is a situation in Starr County where a land owner took down her fence and claimed all of her neighbor's
ten acres.
Your area in Dimmit County is called a vacancy by the General Land Office's Land Grant Database. I assume the
GLO has Texas surveyors. I have known a few -- Irving Webb, Clint Sumrall, Herman Forbes, Malcolm Bambridge,
Jimmy Flowers, Ben Thomson, and of course, some of the younger RPLS's and LSLS's in the GLO.
Of course, there are individuals in the GLO, like LaNell Aston, not an RPLS, who could out research any RPLS or LSLS in
the State of Texas.
Since you do not know how to use Google Earth or the GLO Land Grant Database to your advantage, maybe
I should wonder if you are a Texas surveyor. I would guess you are.
> As a settled matter of law it's not possible that there is a vacancy between two surveys in the same system tied together by adjoiner calls.
>
> Can you cite a course case?
Sure. Findlay v. State (238 SW 956; 1921) and the more recent case of Strong v. Sunray DX Oil Co. (448 S.W.2d 728; 1969) will get you started if you want to acquaint yourself with Texas case law.
> Mistakenly calling for an adjoiner must happen less than you think.
The principle, of course, is that unless it can be conclusively shown that a call for an adjoiner was by mistake or conjecture, it overrides calls for distance and direction. In the case of a series of surveys made by the same surveyor at the same time, the presumption is so strong that the locating surveyor was aware of the lines he had run and the corners that he had made, and the lines and corners he had protracted from them in drawing up field notes for the surveys in the system that it necessarily follows that there can be no vacancy in the interior lines of a system of surveys.
> I could show you a situation where an original surveyor in Atascosa County laid out original surveys over the course of several years. Maybe he had one of your 'systems'.
Actually, the legal concept of a system of surveys has been around for more than a century. It isn't some novel idea in Texas surveying.
> He made an bad call for an adjoiner next to a survey he had completed a few years before.
It sounds as if someone needs to hire a surveyor to give an opinion about that one. State v. Dayton Lumber Co. (159 SW 391; 1912) is a good case on point.
> Your area in Dimmit County is called a vacancy by the General Land Office's Land Grant Database.
I'm afraid you're much more uninformed than you think. The GLO Land Grant Database shows no such thing. It reflects two Scrap File applications, both of which were held to be void by the Commissioners of the GLO at the time.
It would seem that having one surveyor doing a series of surveys in an area
would make everything work out fine. However, there is a problem, and the
problem is yours, and now also your client's. So explain to your client what
happened. Good luck!!!
> However, there is a problem, and the problem is yours, and now also your client's.
Actually, the problem isn't mine. I collected a nice fee for demonstrating how the GIS mapping was the work of morons.
