Surveying Legal Principles
What the exam tests
Legal principles items test deed construction, senior rights, adverse possession, easements, recording, and professional standard of care. Expect a conflict between deed calls or between recorded documents.
Deed construction
- The goal is the parties' intent as expressed in the deed and the surrounding evidence.
- Calls are ranked: natural monuments, artificial monuments, courses and distances, area. A call for an adjoiner or a line actually run can carry great weight.
- Senior rights prevail when a junior deed conflicts with an earlier conveyance.
- Ambiguities are generally construed against the grantor who drafted the instrument.
- Extrinsic evidence may explain a latent ambiguity but may not vary an unambiguous deed.
Possession and easements
Adverse possession requires open, notorious, continuous, exclusive, and hostile use for the statutory period. Prescription creates an easement by similar use. An easement by necessity arises from severance and strict necessity. Recording statutes protect subsequent purchasers, but recording does not cure a defective description.
Worked example
A deed conveys "to the large oak tree, then north 200 ft." The oak is found, but the line actually run reaches a stone 195 ft away. The called-for oak and the stone, if original and identified, may control over the record distance; the surveyor must weigh the evidence and not simply hold 200 ft.
Traps
- Applying junior rights over senior rights.
- Using parol evidence to change clear deed language.
- Assuming recording validates a bad description.
- Confusing adverse possession with a boundary agreement.
- Ignoring the statutory period and each required element.