Do pet cemeteries count as cemeteries?
If so, and burial grounds are cemeteries, then nearly every backyard in the country is a cemetery. Might just be a baby bird or a dead frog a kid once found run over in the street, but, they're buried "out back".
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> Land boundaries will no longer sustain a profession. Surveyors have to be willing to expand their knowledge and locate these regulatory boundary concerns. The mortgage survey is dead, the subdivision showing only land boundaries is dead, the ALTA survey is close to dead (inspections such as those done with mortgage surveys and then affidavits of no change close to follow), those that cling to the old school will perish as well.
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> Think about how to perform the service and write a reasonable contract to do it, not about how to avoid the required language.
I really don't get how "we" are losing all the different types of surveys. 95% of all the surveys i do are ALTA's. I do have a couple plats, no mortgage surveys, and all subdivisions (plats in Florida, which basically have to have an ALTA to start with) that we do are in no way "dead". A boundary is what the profession is based upon. Would you let a lawyer tell you where your boundary is? If so, how could he prove it? You might have a PLS and a jd, but the old school is where our profession lies. GIS, GPS, AutoCAD, Carlson doesn't matter if we can't measure dirt and determine boundary lines by our own knowledge, calculations and experience. We have indian burial mounds here in Florida, sometimes they look like hills, and sometimes they are, but we don't go and say "it's a hill in Florida, so it must me a Seminole mound", no, we look at it as we see it in the field. If it's noted during the research that there are mounds in the area, most likely, they have been found already and you'd be in the know. It's 2012, you can't hide anything anymore. Local knowledge about cemeteries and/or burial grounds is golden. Ask and it shall be revealed.
> ....There isn't any liability issue if you perform some research and thorough investigation. You can't be held to find the "missing link" buried 20,000 years ago.
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> Think about how to perform the service and write a reasonable contract to do it, not about how to avoid the required language.
Mr. Frymire,
Respectfully, what you said above is wrong. You can be held liable and you will be held liable for making statements of fact that turn out to be wrong.
Not only that, check your professional liability insurance policy. If you take on liability for which you would have not otherwise been liable, your insurance will not cover you.
The whole reason some title insurance companies want surveyors to make blanket statements like "no cemeteries or burial grounds on subject property" is they want someone, anyone to take the liability for making such a statement.
We all are better off sticking to making statements that we can stand behind 100%. I can stand behind a statement that I found no readily apparent evidence of cemeteries near the boundary lines of the subject property.
No one can truly stand behind a statement that there are no cemeteries or burial grounds on the subject property. How can one possibly know what (or who) might be buried beneath the surface? The fact is you can't know. You can strongly suspect, but you can't know that.
Larry P
Larry and all,
Please excuse my frustration showing through. But I do believe that property boundaries will not sustain the profession because they are becoming less important than regulatory boundaries and because the cadastre will continue to get better and need less maintanence or involvement from surveyors.
When "planners" (or title companies) ask for statements about information on the map, I take it as an offer to perform those services. If the terms are not to my liking then I make a counter-offer. There is a reason they are asking for the note.
Of course we are liable for our contractual obligations and that's the way it should be. Surveyors should be aware that clients expect a professional surveyor to be reporting things that might affect the land. Surveyors merely surveying a land boundary have been held liable for not showing or noting wetland areas (even though said service was not in the contract).
A surveyor could very well be held liable for not showing a burial ground or evidence thereof. The only question is how thorough a search it must be and the proper language to go along with it.
> Do pet cemeteries count as cemeteries?
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> If so, and burial grounds are cemeteries, then nearly every backyard in the country is a cemetery. Might just be a baby bird or a dead frog a kid once found run over in the street, but, they're buried "out back".
No
A few months back, I ran into an old acquaintence who is a musician that I haven't seen in 20 years or so.
Whne I first arrived in New Orleans in the early 70's, he was also barkeep at a place called the "Wrong Place" on Rampart St in the French Quarter where I spent a lot of my time making new friends and listening to local musicians. Yes it weas called the "Wrong Place".
anyway, he told me that some of the former patrons and musicians who have kept in touch through the years are now passing on and are having their ashes spread on the neutral ground (grass median) of Rampart St.
ashes to ashes dust to dust...
Florida does it like this:
5J-17.052 Minimum Technical Standards: Specific Survey, Map, and Report Requirements.
Human cemeteries and burial grounds located within the premises shall be located and shown upon the map when open and notorious, or when knowledge of their existence and location is furnished to the surveyor and mapper.
This is the only place in out MTS that burial grounds are mentioned.
