Surveyors Indicate What is Important
> 18 are concerned with surveying and survey law.
> 19 are concerned with mechanical pencils.
Well, there were only seventeen paragraphs in the article. The task, such as it is, is to distill the central idea of each paragraph into one sentence to produce a plain summary.
After 0.10' It Is Professional Judgement
> And your opinion may vary from mine.
>
> Paul in PA
I assume there is no authoritative source for this "rule"?
If You Stake the Deed, And Monuments Are Within Tolerance
>I recall from New jersey specs for farmland and open space surveys, that a monument within 1.5' is acceptable to represent a corner and a new monument is not required.
>
The New Jersey spec comes from the NJ Department of Environment Protection for their Green Acres acquisition program and has no basis in case law.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
I do not think there is any significant difference between the way you practice and what Lucas is writing about in his articles. I doubt that you have ever expressed an opinion on a boundary location that was not well reasoned. I am pretty sure you are well educated with respect to boundary law in Texas. So where is the beef? Do you propose casting aside common sense and THAT WE exalt ignorance of the law? If anything Lucas is guilty of being clumsy in his presentation as opposed to presenting some new far fetched survey fashion. The problem is not Lucas but it is the fashionitas. The fashionistas had problems executing boundary surveys before Lucas and they will have problems after Lucas. Lucas is correct, property owners have rights and surveyors have a duty to protect those rights,ERGO "STATUS QUO". The unfortunate problem here is that it takes ego to sell books and seminars. It is the Lucas ego that will prevent him from acknowledging that he in fact has no prescription that will cure the human condition. The fact that good and bad boundary surveyors exist and that good surveyors will sometimes err and be mistaken is proof of the human condition. People are FALLIBLE, NO WAY AROUND THAT FACT.
In the meantime, I see no harm in having a Cassandra around to remind us-that we should know the law and use common sense.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
> I do not think there is any significant difference between the way you practice and what Lucas is writing about in his articles. I doubt that you have ever expressed an opinion on a boundary location that was not well reasoned. I am pretty sure you are well educated with respect to boundary law in Texas. So where is the beef? Do you propose casting aside common sense and THAT WE exalt ignorance of the law?
What I find lacking about that piece is that it fails to simply frame the problem in professional terms, i.e. the evaluation of boundary evidence. That is a quite straight forward traditional problem that is fairly well treated in Skelton and elsewhere, hardly some unexplored territory requiring the reinvention of the surveying profession.
The problem that Lucas complains of would appear to be what is evidently the common practice in Georgia of elevating calls for course and distance over other evidence of where lines were actually marked by some contemporaneous survey at the time of the creation of the boundary or in the remote past when other evidence of that survey was likely in existence.
The roots of that problematic practice are probably largely driven by economics, just as the reason why there isn't a demand for his services in Georgia is most likely as well. You can't spent sixteen or twenty-four hours conferring with clients and/or their lien holders and attorneys and expect the Ford Foundation to send you a check to cover the cost of your time.
What is more broadly objectionable about Lucas's writings is a general failure to acknowledge that the making of accurate, reliable measurements is one of the central reasons why land surveying is a licensed profession in the first place, on a par with the investigation of the public records and the preparation of maps and reports to communicate findings and opinions.
> If anything Lucas is guilty of being clumsy in his presentation as opposed to presenting some new far fetched survey fashion.
I think "clumsy" is entirely too kind a word. I say it is sloppily reasoned and parochial, dealing with a quite narrow problem specific to some backwoods areas where the standards of surveying practice have fallen and can't get up.
> The problem is not Lucas but it is the fashionitas. The fashionistas had problems executing boundary surveys before Lucas and they will have problems after Lucas.
Well, it seems fairly plain to me that market forces are driving the great speed-up in nearly all professional activities, surveying included. It definitely applies to the practice of law, also. The market generally has less real dollars to spend on services and is getting less in return. Part of the mission of many licensing boards is evidently to guarantee the oversupply of licensees to encourage price competition on the theory that this benefits the public.
There are rational outcomes from that and what I'd call the "plausible deniability" survey is certainly one in the surveying profession, i.e. the service that takes the least amount of time but can still be argued to have been not incompetently performed.
> Lucas is correct, property owners have rights and surveyors have a duty to protect those rights,ERGO "STATUS QUO".
Are those the same property owners who don't want to pay a sufficient amount of money to have a proper survey made in the first place? If so the Lucas recipe is really just to create a new area of activity in which surveyors can donate time and materials to their clients.
> The unfortunate problem here is that it takes ego to sell books and seminars. It is the Lucas ego that will prevent him from acknowledging that he in fact has no prescription that will cure the human condition.
Actually, since it is economics that is behind the problems complained of, that ought to properly be the measure of any solution: whether the system costs are reduced or increased.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
Skelton included a chapter on the Establishment Doctrines. Of course, it's a mash of citations from several States.
Is Skelton actually put into practice anywhere? Brown seems more prevalent due to its more formulaic nature which appeals to Engineers and Land Developers, efficiency of "boundary resolution" being the post war desire by all parties involved.
Skelton writes more like a legal scholar than an Engineering Professor.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
> Skelton included a chapter on the Establishment Doctrines. Of course, it's a mash of citations from several States.
>
> Is Skelton actually put into practice anywhere?
Sure, I consider Skelton to be a fundamental text. Brown I don't find all that useful, tending as he does to be formulaic in a world presenting endlessly varied fact situations defying any solution by formula.
Of the doctrines of establishment, agreement, recognition and aquiescence, and estoppel are probably the most commonly applied in Texas, in that order.
> Skelton writes more like a legal scholar than an Engineering Professor.
The genius of Skelton is that he writes in terms of potentially contradictory principles rather than easy answers.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
I do like what Skelton did a lot, it just doesn't seem to have caught on in a big way. The other issue is the book is not readily available.
I happened to come across a copy in our office library so I borrowed it.
Sometimes I think it should be updated but then I think, who would purchase a copy? Would anyone care?
I like the idea of a boundary book which discusses actual case law and the proper decision making flow towards good judgment instead of what we have now, either mathematical formulas or seminar presenters that always talk about their one or two favorite cases and the whole world should just follow them.
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
Skelton was the first survey "law" book that I bought back in the 70s. As far as I'm concerned, Skelton had it (and did it) RIGHT. Clark was okay, but not in Skelton's class.
Loyal
Surveyors Indicate What is Important
> I do like what Skelton did a lot, it just doesn't seem to have caught on in a big way. The other issue is the book is not readily available.
It was on the list of study material when I took the licensing exam in Texas about thirty years ago. Of course, it was still in print at the time, too.
> Sometimes I think it should be updated but then I think, who would purchase a copy? Would anyone care?
I think that it should be updated, but I cringe when I think who might take it on as a project. Ray Skelton was a scholar who appears to have had some time on his hands.
> I like the idea of a boundary book which discusses actual case law and the proper decision making flow towards good judgment instead of what we have now, either mathematical formulas or seminar presenters that always talk about their one or two favorite cases and the whole world should just follow them.
I think that the idea of a single book is probably unfeasible since there is so much variation by setting and time and by region. General topics that would make monographs/chapters is probably an adequately ambitious project.
I also like the device of presenting specific problems from the real world, preferably those that were resolved, either at trial or by other means. They would be nice to give a flavor to what theory looks like in practice. Where well-known cases are involved, simply getting more details about the case than exist in the published report might be adequate.
Wow Really?
No Skelton is not put into practice anywhere but the principles he illustrates by his examination of case law are routinely employed day in and day out and even by Brown.
Wow Really?
> No Skelton is not put into practice anywhere but the principles he illustrates by his examination of case law are routinely employed day in and day out and even by Brown.
You're splitting fine red hairs, Dane. Skelton's work is essentially a statement of principles. To the extent that those principles have been recognized by Texas courts, they are the basis of competent practice of land surveying in Texas. Naturally, I can't speak for other places such as the states where the usual suspects practice.