California Surveyors Forums

Excellent article, thanks for posting.

And you called it well

Thanks it hit the spot

Wow. We must have been reading different articles of the same titles, because I didn't find half of the messages you attributed to "the pundits" in these articles.

Perhaps the difference is in reading to gain understanding vs reading with intent to refute.

You made a few good points that are worthy of civil professional discussion, but it's not easy to pick them out from the rant about what you characterize "the pundits" as saying. For the most part, the "pundits" you refer to didn't say what you assert that they said. But it's your story, you tell it how you like.

But then again, after looking at all of your links, although the main focus of the hit piece seems to toward Jeff Lucas, one link goes to this forum where you took exception to the opinions of a few surveyors more familiar with CA boundary and RW law, so maybe I'm just a "pundit" and should just take my share of the beating you suppose to give.

I get it.
Take a deep breath.
Relax.
Survey.
Thanks.

Spot on Mr. Page. As always.

Evan Page! You ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!!!

For the most part, I agree with Lucas on his comments on the pin cushion corners.

On a different forum, there is a discussion on "witness corners" in which it seems to advocate the use of corner monuments that are off by a finger nail distance, and call them witness corners to the "true" corner.

You have a tremendous problem staring you in the face and I don't see much written about this being absolutely stupid!

If anything happens negatively about the surveying profession, this idiotic concept will do it.

I am sure that you can understand what a landowner thinks when he pays what he thinks is an exorbitant fee to get the boundary idenitified and then finds a second monument that is a finger length away from an existing monument?

And what he then thinks of surveyors!

I guarantee that the client WILL NEVER BLAME THEMSELVES for employing the cheapest surveyor possible.

BTW if one is ignorant of what is ACTUALLY REQUIRED to conduct a proper survey; exactly, what is the criteria the client uses to determine an appropriate fee in the first place.... oh right the realtor said it should not cost more that fifty bucks......

The Realtors and Title Companies absolutely positively DO NOT WANT Surveyors involved, they just mess up their closings by telling the buyer all the issues that need being dealt with.

Just thinking, but would it not be a proper issue to have the State Boards on Surveying, comment on these damnable pin cushion corner monuments?

If not, why not?

Arn't they the policy makers in your State?

Just wondering!

Dave Karoly, PLS wrote:Evan Page! You ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!!!

Dave,

what's your phone number? I need to call you to tell you in no uncertain terms that you are never to call me again!

Good Day Sir!

Being professional?

It was intended to be my weak linkish attempt at humor.

The reference may be obscure...a game show known as the weakest link, when someone got voted off the British host would say, "So-and-so, you are the weakest link! Goodbye!" I'd find it on YouTube but I can't do YouTube at work.

Keith,

You won't ever have to worry about Dave and Evan being anything but professional toward each other!

They just have highly evolved - although eclectic - senses of humor ...

to have humor on this forum, I need to really be obvious, and if not, indicate the humor with those little icons i.e. ------ ;)

There weren't a lot of comments with regards to the "weakest link" accusation or the telephone call, so I am thinking that everyone knew that it was humor, albeit eclectic.

Maybe I should delete my phone number from my posts. Don't know, just killing time.

or maybe posters just didn't want to touch it!

Didn't look like humor to me?

So be it and then looking for comments on pin cushion corners.

bruce hall wrote:......so I am thinking that everyone knew that it was humor, albeit eclectic..............

I didn't.

Dave, Warren, and I are all on the same page on this. Where's that darn sarcasm font when you need it?

My response also obliquely refers to a phone call I once received from Houston as well. First and only time I ever had someone I had never spoken to (and never called) call me to tell me to never call them again.

Time to move on.

Water under bridge.

http://www.pobonline.com/articles/91572 ... tober-2007

"I am the land surveyor who is the subject of Mr. Jeffery Lucas’ article entitled “Traversing the Law-Jousting at windmills-again” that appeared in POB’s August 2007 magazine. I’m quite sure he has never seen my surveys regarding this matter. Mr. Lucas said in his article about court opinions that: “such opinions often lack in detail leaving much to the imagination.” I would like to give Mr. Lucas and your readers the surveying details of this case so they can judge for themselves.

In fairness to me, I certainly would appreciate POB informing its readers through its website and its September 2007 issue that Mr. Lucas and POB are going to review the surveys in the Knerr case and then address the Knerr case in a subsequent article. Please also tell your readers that I welcome a review of my surveys and I will be happy to cooperate. I think your readers will be most interested in how I arrived at my opinions about the location of the interior boundary lines in this 1926 tract map. I would like to have the opportunity to make lemonade out of the lemons handed to me.

Stephen M. Hughey, PLS, PhD"

I guess POB called Mr. Hughey to tell him they would never call him back.....

"Traversing the Law
August 2007

The column in the August 2007 issue of POB, “Traversing the Law - Jousting at windmills-again,” by Jeffery Lucas, reviewed an unpublished 2006 California Appellate Court case, Knerr v Mauldin (Knerr). The California Land Surveyors Association (CLSA) hopes to provide the following pertinent information in the proper context for your readers’ clarification.

CLSA AMICUS CURIÆ BRIEF - CLSA understands that the rhetorical question of whether CLSA …”never read this case?” - or any other case cited in its brief – is drama, certainly useful in a court of law or for increasing readership. CLSA did not, as was suggested in the column, leave it “up to their attorneys.” Be assured that CLSA’s participation in Knerr was well thought out and certainly not an incredible jump into the fray. Nor did CLSA categorically support the “…methodology employed by Knerr’s surveyor….” As described, CLSA did in fact submit an amicus curiæ brief on behalf of the plaintiff. It was with some trepidation that CLSA weighed in on anyone’s behalf (plaintiff/appellant OR defendant/respondent). As the column clearly demonstrates, an amicus brief is likely perceived as wholly in support of the arguments, positions and actions of the parties for whom the brief is filed. But the opportunity to file an “unaffiliated” brief was unavailable. Here, in Knerr, it was one core issue that CLSA deemed important enough to have the courts understand and for which it felt the effort of an amicus brief was warranted. After a lengthy review of all the transcripts, all the exhibits, all the related maps and understanding the nuances such boundary disputes contain (as fully as is possible) by many surveyors licensed in California, CLSA drafted the amicus curiæ brief and chose the supporting references. Only then was the brief reviewed for form and completeness by lawyers experienced in appellate and supreme court case work.

THE CORE ISSUE - The premise that CLSA felt was important to have the courts understand was that recovered, verified, original monuments that control the exterior boundary of a protracted subdivision of land (that is, no original interior monuments were ever set), should supersede non-original monuments set at the corners of the interior lots by later surveys. There was not even the benefit of a record showing how some of these subsequent interior lot monuments were ever set. The only claim to legitimacy made for these markers was that they bore the tag of a land surveyor who performed work in the area in the 1960’s.

To be sure, the other two issues that the CLSA amicus addressed to the Appellate Court were not relevant to this response or Mr. Lucas’ column. THOMPSON CITE – Mr. Lucas’ cite from State of California v Thompson (22 Cal.App.3d 368, 1971) would be relevant only if the “established monuments” are original. After he actually reads Thompson, he will find that the court referred to reestablishing section lines and that “A survey from the nearest established corner is least liable to error” (emphasis added). In Thompson, the nearest established corner was accepted unequivocally by both parties as an original corner of the government survey. Not so in Knerr. Those monuments had no ties to the original survey and had no credible record of how they were established.

In Knerr, some of the older existing interior monuments within the Chatsworth Lake View Annex (Chatsworth) subdivision were set, possibly in the late 1960’s, without benefit of a map showing how they were set or the relationship they bore to the exterior of the tract. Subsequent surveys relied on them simply because they have been there for years. While such non-original monuments may be the reason a particular lot is located in a particular place and speak to issues of occupation or possession, they may or may not truly represent the original title lines as described on the Chatsworth map. It was this issue that CLSA needed the courts to understand. Apparently, neither the Trial Court nor the Appellate Court actually did. The courts seized upon the premise of a nearby “established” monument controlling local surveys, without qualification as to how that nearby monument was “established.”

ORIGINAL SURVEYOR– Mr. Lucas confuses public lands, surveyed at the direction of the Surveyor General, with creation of a private subdivision. True, the first surveyor to lay out a township may be followed by other original surveyors who subdivide, either in whole or in part, the township and/or specific sections.

To suggest that the “original” surveyor for the (protracted) Chatsworth lots is he who first sets monuments is novel. Perhaps there could be 781 “original” surveyors for each of the 781 lots.

In Knerr, there was indeed an original surveyor: T.S. Davy, an engineer, who, in 1926, surveyed only the exterior of the boundary of the Chatsworth property, and then protracted (drew) the interior lots on the map, a lamentably common custom during that era. The exterior boundary of Chatsworth was tied to a marker (S-10) on a county line at an angle on the boundary of a rancho (a Spanish land grant similar to those in Mr. Lucas’ licensure state of Alabama), and was clearly labeled on the map. This was not “…apparently a quarter section or section corner…” as stated in the article. The S-10 marker was one of the few monuments used to control the entire boundary of the Chatsworth subdivision! Location of this, and other supportable monuments would be mandatory as part of the reestablishment and retracement of the Chatsworth exterior boundary.

SUMMARY - To condense the many issues in this case relevant to the CLSA brief, almost to the point of oversimplification, consider the question: When performing a land survey to determine title location of a client’s lot, would you use the nearest found, unrecorded, unjustified, non-original marker(s) without ties to the exterior of the tract to control the lot’s location, OR would you first reestablish the exterior of the tract as shown on the original map, then reestablish the lot location within that tract and then mark the lot’s location on the ground and show that location vis-à-vis occupation, possession or other conflicting issues?

CLSA finds some relief that the Knerr case was not certified for publication. The “grab a pipe and go” approach to boundary resolution is becoming far too common, and publication of Knerr would have given an authority for such practice. As Mr. Lucas posits, it is important to see the forest, but the approach of cutting down all the trees until one finds the tree that suits one’s purposes, CLSA feels is a mistake.

Steven Shambeck, PLS
2007 President, CLSA"

I guess POB called the CLSA and told them they would never call them back either....

My the webs we weave....memories...light the corners of my mind....misty water colored memories....

"I profess to be a professional land surveyor, not a professional title examiner or an attorney who writes title opinions. Mr. Hixson's article suggests that we must be all three. Either that or he doesn't understand junior and senior rights. Even title companies rarely go back in the chain more the 30 years. I've heard some old crusty title examiners claim that even though 30 years is the minimum, they will always go back at least 50 years. This wouldn't be good enough to resolve boundary issues to Mr. Hixson's liking. Just because the latest deed on an adjoiner was recorded in 1984 and the deed for the subject property was recorded in 1994, doesn't mean that the adjoiner has a senior interest in the land. In addition, calls for adjoiners in deeds do not always spell out senior rights either. One must track the chain back to the common grantor, which could be the original patentee, before junior/senior rights can be established. And what surveyor in his right mind wants to be writing opinions on rights into property in the first place? We are not trained in the law or licensed to do so. This is way beyond any standard of care and reaches into areas of incompetence. Unless he is also a practicing attorney, advising clients on their rights in property is malpractice."

http://archives.profsurv.com/magazine/a ... aspx?i=972

http://archives.profsurv.com/magazine/a ... spx?i=1086 Here is another jewel for you....don't call me, I will call you from now on.

The bridge is under water....