Tulare area/county survey question, mon description?

[CBarrett]

Just looking at it on the surface, in terms of equity and how it might work logically, since one property is already burdened by an easement, it seems unjust to burden it with yet another. It has a flavor of double jeopardy for the burdened property. I would imagine that the judge sees it, if you already have an easement, you should make every effort to use it, and if you fail to do so, that is on you, and you don't get to create a double burden on the servient land.

In a different vein, quick update to my project, in spite of no title reports I started pulling vesting deeds for some of the surrounding properties to get a sense for how the land has been historically deeded and parcelized. Most of the legal descriptions are very approximate, here and there they tie in to a section, lot of qualifying calls fo "to a house" or to a ditch (probably as it existed in 1910's) and similar.

I haven't seen enough yet to decide, but I am starting to think that in this particular area, 30 feet discrepancy may not amount to a material discrepancy. I am not too confident about that yet, but the thought HAS occurred.

I spent an hour or two or so pouring over the google maps aerial imagery again, and looking at the way some of the fences, walls and and hedges are built, there are a few hints that long time ago the road may have existed in a different place... about 15-30 feet to the southeast. Probably 50 to 70 years ago.

[DWoolley]

____________________________________________________________________________________
Public Road
_____________________________________________________________________________________
............................................ | |............................................
Parcel 1 ................................. | | ...........................................Parcel 2
............................................ | | (W20' of Par. 2 "easement")
Table Grapes............... ............ | | .......................................... Artichoke King
............................................ | | ............................................
_____________________________________________________________________________________
............................................ Parcel 3 [Beans]............................................
..............................................................................................................
Legend
.........Crops
| | 20' easement

Table Grape farmer plants his vineyard up to the west line of Parcel 2. Table Grape uses his easement - besides ingress and egress - to pull through on his tractor, turn around and go to the next row of grapes. Parcel 3 also uses the the easement to access his fields. Not shown is a public road on the west line of Parcels 2 and 3. Artichoke King wants to plant up to the easement line - cutting off Table Grapes "turn around" outside of the 20' easement. One solution would be for Table Grape to cut approximately 30' off the east end of the vineyard and turn around on his own land. The parties become adversarial and hire a land surveyor. The land surveyor discovers the 20' easement never existed. The parties, after decades of use and word of mouth, assumed the easement existed. The road is old enough to be shown on a quad map.

Judge rules Parcel 1 does not have an easement (prescriptive or otherwise), Parcel 3 can access the property from the public road on the west and Artichoke King can fence up to the vineyard. The problem with the public road on the west is it is a major thoroughfare and cars travel in excess of 60 mph. The public road to the north is paved, but only has farm traffic. Table Grape has to cut off more than 50' (x 2000'ish)to turn the tractor around on his own property. These are not small farm operations.

Table Grape causes property damage to Artichoke King by continuing to use the "easement" until it was fenced and other assorted farmer strife. I get called in to testify as a material witness against my client (Table Grape) in the subsequent civil trial. They focused their questions on the timeframe I notified Table Grape of my findings, our conversations, etc.

A cautionary tale for any land surveyor. I would not assume because the elements exists a prescriptive easement exists until it has been adjudicated. FWIW.

DWoolley

[CBarrett]

So after two weeks of digging, I finally got confirmation from Caltrans that the road has indeed NOT been built in the middle of the right of way (their as-built plans), but meanders. The 30-ish foot paved traveled way, within a 60 foot right of way, meanders from one edge of the ROW to the other, to within 2-3 feet between the edge of traveled way and the ROW. This is already a documented issue, albeit one that took a lot of additional digging to uncover.

Thankfully we/I did not rush to 'split the road' and assume it is indicative of the ROW location.

[DWoolley]

So after two weeks of digging, I finally got confirmation from Caltrans that the road has indeed NOT been built in the middle of the right of way (their as-built plans), but meanders. The 30-ish foot pervaded traveled way, within a 60 foot right of way, meanders from one edge of the ROW to the other, to within 2-3 feet between the edge of traveled way and the ROW. This is already a documented issue, albeit one that took a lot of additional digging to uncover.

Thankfully we/I did not rush to 'split the road' and assume it is indicative of the ROW location.

Well done, good job.

Thanks for getting this meandering conversation started.

DWoolley