California Surveyors Forums

I mentioned a few weeks ago I was writing an article about survey monuments and who owns them. I have attached the article. It is a very interesting case. Because of the demands of editing and brevity, I whittled the story down quite a bit. There were a lot of legal arguments regarding easements and surveying activities.

I hope you folks find it worthy as a conversation catalyst.

The Court's reasoning about what triggers the consummation of condemnation was interesting. The mere placement of the (physically hidden) monuments was not enough, and the "encroachment" of a few square inches was not considered an act of taking.

I didn't read where ownership of the monuments was addressed, just that their existence had a certain dignity - which did not rise to an actionable claim.

Again, the presence of the monuments, noted on a record of survey, seemed to play a minor role in the issues being adjudicated.

The article states "...buried so deep, it made them impossible to find or observe. They were hidden monuments and, again for reasons that remain troubling, the property owners were never notified about the survey."

And yet, there is a filed map and a photo of the monument in the article.

In dirt, sans walls or fences, don't surveyors dig down a foot and sound again before declaring "searched found nothing"? With walls and fences ...dig a couple of feet?

I have found many hidden monuments- exceeding 2 feet in depth - in my career.

I appreciate the article, sincerely.

DWoolley

FYI, it would seem there is a truncated paragraph in the upper right corner of page 5 of the article. The final sentence being: "Regardless of the reasons, because the stamped pipes were.........." Hopefully, not too much is missing.

I am curious as to how you can say they were impossible to find. Based on the article, they were set per a recorded map and stated as to how deep they were. Not to mention they were recovered later by Beers and Hunsaker and they even make a statement as to what they found. I understand they may be hard to occupy based on the depth but the use of a finite term such as "impossible" is I think a poor word choice.

If I pull a map that says a monument is 2 feet down, you best believe I am digging down at least 2 feet and trying to use a locator again before saying "searched, found nothing". I know of other parts of Orange County that have monuments set 2 feet down or more that we have occupied without any issue. The crazy thing is, these monuments are concrete and contain no metal so using a locator is not even possible, yet we still dug down and found them, yet by definition, these would be invisible as well. This same principle of invisibility could be taken into lines of ownership as they are not always the visible lines of occupation.

In my opinion, I think it was actually a clever idea to set the disks 2 feet under the ground as at the time, this land was primarily used as farm land and setting surface monuments would have been a poor choice since a tractor and/or tiller could have easily wiped out the monument.

In your article, you never mentioned if you had reached out to Mr. Stiles regarding the map or the intention of why the monuments were set a certain way, nor was it mentioned as to if Mr. Beers or Hunsaker ever did the same. I would have found it important to document on my survey (assuming Beers and Hunsaker would file if needed) and take an oath from Mr. Stiles.

One way or the other, fascinating and interesting case Mr. Pallamary and I am happy to have been brought to light of the issues in this area.

bryanmundia wrote:
In my opinion, I think it was actually a clever idea to set the disks 2 feet under the ground as at the time, this land was primarily used as farm land and setting surface monuments would have been a poor choice since a tractor and/or tiller could have easily wiped out the monument.

Yep, if the area is subject to farming/plowing, setting monuments down a few tenths would be foolhardy. Even areas that are not subject to deeper plowing methods, but are just grubbed out from time to time, will see monuments that are bent/leaning quite often. I am thinking any new monument set in those lands should be set at the very least a foot down if not more.

Anyone here on the Bay Area coast looking for the old Caltrans concrete monuments in areas of farming will constantly find them broken off and you are tying in their centerline remains down 1-2 feet fairly regularly.

Lee Hixson wrote:FYI, it would seem there is a truncated paragraph in the upper right corner of page 5 of the article. The final sentence being: "Regardless of the reasons, because the stamped pipes were.........." Hopefully, not too much is missing.

Hi, that paragraph continues on Page 6 of the article. Maybe your download didn't include the entire 7 pages.

Anyone else having issues pulling the referenced Record of Survey in the article? I look at that book and page and it isn't the correct RS.

Howdy folks,

I have attached the two ROS maps. I enjoyed all the comments. I would like to address the monuments. I spent a full day on the property and looked for the monuments without employing any surveying tools. On its own, burying monuments two feet deep in an agricultural field is not a bad idea. That is different.

In this case, the monumented lines are interior from the lot lines. Take a look at the attached maps. Without knowing about the easements and their location, how would the property owner know what is going on? According to the complaint, no one let the owners know anything was being surveyed. The surveyors did not give the owners any notice. It took ten years before the owners realized the monuments had been set. How would they no?

One would expect that surveys occur along property lines, not all over the place in bizarre locations like in between buildings. The owners call the surveys "secret" and stealth."

Of course, if you are a surveyor you would know how to find the monuments. These people are not surveyors and that is the problem.

Check out the maps and see where they set the secret monuments.

These exhibits did not make it into the article. What I published is one-third of what I wrote.
There are a lot of great legal arguments about easements. I did not have enough space to include.

Under what circumstances would you expect to find monuments at the easement corners, even as a surveyor (if you did not have the ROS)?

I haven't yet read the article. Am I on track in understanding that the agency seeking to condemn the property were claiming use in the form of the few square inches occupied by the monuments?

This discussion and the maps posted have piqued my curiosity enough that I'll need to make time this weekend to read the article.

Physical taking = physical taking. In this case a physical taking is defined as the flooding of the subject lands. No flooding = No physical taking.

Although I did not see it stated in the article, what I surmise is that plaintiff equated monumenting the edge of the "flowage easement" as a physical invasion of lands, or a physical taking. Weird. Who owns the monuments? Why does this question arise I don't know. I would have counseled plaintiff attorneys on a different tack.

This looks like a regulatory takings case if a case at all. Plaintiff attorneys blew it.

What the court said was the recorded easement was not an invasion of the property - the monuments were. In other words, six monuments, four inches round for a total of size of about that of a phone book, constituted the physical invasion. The actual monuments - all six of them - were a taking. The agency is the owner of the monuments and not the public nor the property owner(s). This would suggest the monuments are not publicly owned per se. The flood control agency owns them and the land occupied by the monuments - all the area occupied by the discs was a take.

Buried monuments. An RS does not constitute constructive notice. There was no actual notice.

The use under this "taking" was not open and notorious. I'd probably get myself in trouble for it, but if I were the land owner, I would exercise a little actual ejectment of that use and reclaim the disconnected, itsy-bitsy taken bits of land that have no practical use to the flood control agency anyway.

Of course, I would not damage the monuments as I ejected them. I would carefully stack them up at the edge of the RW and notify the flood control agency that they should come and retrieve their property. If they own the monuments, fine. They can have them. But they placed them on my property without my permission, without notice to me, and then sought to hide that placement from me.

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

that ^ is funny.

Do you all think that a filed record of survey AND a title commitment would serve as constructive notice?

During a court proceeding I was on the stand as “Expert” (ya right) for the defense, the plaintiffs Attorney was objecting to my use of a Record of Survey because of construction ( Record of Surveys are not constructive notice).
To make a long story short I was able to show the judge that the Record of Survey is in fact constructive notice because the defendant’s deeds made reference to said Record of Survey.
For construction you need the Record of Survey to be part of the Deed in wording that makes the map part of the legal description.

Brian