Land Surveyor Blogs

Chain!

“About Horses and Water”

Written by Penn Cheyning RPLS
(This story is completely fictional, any resemblance to actual events is purely a coincidence).

I received a phone call about a boundary dispute in an area of the city I know fairly well. I had not performed a survey in this particular subdivision but had surveyed other tracts of land in adjoining subdivisions many times. I was fairly certain it would not pose much of a challenge although the description was for a couple of Lots and a fraction of a Lot. A written contact was negotiated and then signed by the client and a field crew was dispatched to the site.

The field crew came back with a fair amount of evidence but it was conflicting. No matter what evidence projection was employed I could not resolve the boundary and reconcile the improvement locations. I began to take a harder look at the record to determine who the original Land Surveyor was and who surveyed the adjoining subdivisions. This shed no further light on the problem that was rapidly approaching intractable.

The problem was so perplexing that I went to the field myself to hunt for more evidence. I pulled the adjoining subdivision maps and decided to tie into those so I could figure out how the subject subdivision was suppose to look like on the ground in theory. When this data was analyzed and assembled a rather startling picture began to emerge.

The original Land Surveyor and the Surveyors of the adjoining subdivisions had reputations that were impeccable. I had followed them many times before and there was little doubt that they would have staked the subdivisions exactly the way they were showing it on the subdivision maps. The boundary of the adjoining subdivisions could be located beyond a reasonable doubt. The subject subdivision fit perfectly inside of those boundaries. Using this projection, what appeared to be, original monuments were found marking two of the eight Block corners in the interior of the subdivision in question.

The problem however persisted. Other pieces of evidence set by subsequent retracing Land Surveyors and some of the occupation did not agree with the above solution by as much as 8 feet in a north/south direction. What was more there were yet other pieces of evidence set by subsequent retracing Land Surveyors and some of the occupation that did not agree with the above solution by as much as 10 feet in an east/west direction.

The question became why would people owning these Lots in this certain Block have ended up occupying land other than what had been conveyed to them according to the Public Record they purchased their land under?

A careful examination of the subject subdivision map and its relationship with the adjoining subdivision maps offered some clues. The adjoining subdivision map where it intersected the boundary of the subject subdivision had a street width of 40 feet. The subject tract subdivision had a street width of 50 feet. In other words the intent had been to have a 10 foot jog in the street as it widened from 40 to 50 feet. If a Land Surveyor attempting to retrace the boundary of one of the Lots within the subject Block had found the adjoining subdivision’s Block corner and tried to project that street line northerly into the subject subdivision this would account for a 10 foot shift in a north/south direction. The original Block corner must have been destroyed at some early point and careless Land Surveyors who had not looked closely at the subdivision map had created this problem by attempting to locate Lots within the subject Block by using the Block corner from an adjoining subdivision. This still did not resolve the other problem with the evidence and improvements being shifted 8 feet in an east/west direction however.

I made several attempts to locate more evidence within the subject Block until an old pipe was located near the base of this tier of Lots the subject Lot was in. This pipe did not agree with any of the previous solutions by 8 feet in and east/west direction and some of the improvements and subsequent retracing Land Surveyor’s stakes found within this tier of Lots seemed to have been built or staked using it. The fences in this tier of Lots along with some of the subsequent retracing Land Surveyor’s stakes found zig zagged back and forth by up to 8 feet. I headed out to the field once again to take a close up look at all of the evidence.

The close examination of the pipe in question was a shocker. I dug around the pipe deeper and deeper trying to figure out more about the character and nature of it. At about 3 feet deep is when I hit an underground “T” in it. I dug the hole wider but it became apparent that the “evidence” in question was nothing more than a very ancient water spigot connection that somebody had simply left in place. Land Surveyors who had found the pipe had used it to construct the boundaries of the Lots they were retracing contrary to the recorded subdivision map not realizing that the “monument” they had found was nothing more than garbage never intended to mark any boundary what so ever.

This “simple” survey had ended up costing me ten times what I had bid on it in the first place. I prepared a lengthy Surveyor’s Report explaining all of it and offering various solutions for resolving the problem. I drafted up the final survey and delivered it to my client in person. I spent well over an hour explaining how and why the survey showed what it showed and how the problem could be resolved with little or no money.

The client was very unhappy despite all of my efforts because it showed that what he was occupying was not what he had purchased. He told me to change the survey to match the location of his improvements. I refused explaining the limit of a Land Surveyor’s power and authority and reiterating cheap solutions for resolving the problem. He said he would not pay for the survey because it did not show what he wanted. I told him I would have no choice but to turn him over to a collection agency. He eventually did write a check and I left him still rather upset.

A few days later I learned that he had cancelled the check after he had given it to me. I turned him over to a collection agency and he never paid the bill. More than five years went past before I got another phone call about a Lot in this same tier of Lots the previous survey had been in. This was a women who had been told by her neighbor that some of her improvements were encroaching by as much as 10 feet on to her neighbor’s land. She hired me but it turned out that I agreed with the Land Surveyor next door who apparently had gone through the same mess I had gone through and come to the same conclusions. She was so impressed by the survey map I produced (eve though it was bad news for her) that she told a neighbor about me. They took one look at the map I had produced on her land and hired me to survey their land too. One thing led to another and I was hired by an adjoiner of the original tract of land I had surveyed in the tier of Lots.

The new client and my old client (who never paid me) were locked in a boundary dispute. Lawsuits back and forth had already started and both of them were in possession of surveys which conflicted. My old client had apparently found a Land Surveyor who showed the boundary where he wanted it, unfortunately that survey was substandard. My client filed a compliant with the Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying against the Land Surveyor who prepared the survey for my old client which resulted in them getting fined and sanctioned. That Land Surveyor withdrew their survey from evidence. My old client then hired another Land Surveyor who produced yet another survey showing something similar as the other Land Surveyor who had been sanctioned.

My client’s lawyer contacted the new Land Surveyor of my old client to obtain an original copy of the survey they had performed on the land in question. When the other Land Surveyor found out the matter was being litigated, the last Land Surveyor had been sanctioned and that I had a survey that showed the boundary differently they altered their survey to match mine.

At this point the lawsuit had been dragging on for months with my old client not being able to produce a survey that would hold up better than a wet paper napkin. Since my old client was unwilling or unable to produce a survey on their property the Court ordered a survey of their property be done by my new client.

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This posed a rather interesting ethical dilemma for me. I had already “surveyed” the property in question so how could I charge to “survey” it again? My old client never paid for the original survey. I had never received permission to release the original survey I had performed on that property from my old client. The improvements had changed since I did the survey on this property some five years earlier. I had revealed to my new client that I had performed a survey of the old client’s property before. The Court knew or should have known that I had surveyed the old client’s property in the past. There actually seemed to be no “dilemma” at all. I went out and surveyed the old client’s land with the police in tow. The old client just glared at us occasionally shouting in our general direction that the boundary we were staking was “wrong” and that he knew where the “real” boundary was. I am expecting this to finally be resolved in the next day or so.

I am involved in yet another lawsuit that is ongoing with a different person in this same Block some four or five Lots to the north of this problem due to the same occupation/deed location issue as discussed above. These problems could be fixed easily if my clients and their neighbors would listen to me and cooperate.

There is an old saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.” It seems some of my clients would rather pay a Lawyer tens of thousands of dollars than listen to a Land Surveyor but I have to admit it is hard to blame some of them given this story.

“Come Ahead!”