The Real Estate Manager of the Agency for whom I work requested that our crew mark a property boundary line so that the Agency planners could determine its impact on plans for development. The Agency's deed called for an aliquot part line that had been monumented a few years ago, so the task did not appear to be one that would be too difficult to accomplish.
On Thursday, September 28, 2006, we arrived on site and began recovering the previously monumented corners that defined the line that we needed to mark. As we looked for and recovered the quarter corner monument between Sections 5 & 8 at the east end of our project on the east side of the state highway, we immediately encountered Mr. Friendly, the landowner on that side of the highway. He told us that he was from an urban area and had acquired the land he owned for recreation. He was very interested in talking about the location of the section lines and how they related to his own property boundaries. He even had with him survey information that he had gotten from the State Land Survey Repository. As long as we were willing to talk with him, he was eager to get as much free surveying information as he could.
As we talked, Mr. Friendly related to me how he had talked to the Property Superintendent one day when she came by to look at the location directly across from his driveway. He stated that she had told him she thought the Agency owned that area all the way to the county road to the north and that there were plans to build a new Superintendent's residence there. Before that could be done, he stated, an old frame building on a stone foundation had to be examined to determine if it had any historical value or anything like that. If not, the plans were to tear it down.
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| Old Frame Building on Stone Foundation |
After his conversation with the Property Superintendent, Mr. Friendly then had a conversation with an unnamed person who indicated that if the Agency tore down the old building, it would be a very expensive building. This was the first indication to me that we may be dealing with a boundary dispute instead of merely an inquiry as to where the boundary was located. Before we even made any measurements, I could see from the location of the quarter corner monument that the section line would run through the middle of the old building.
We proceeded with traverse work that same day and continued on Tuesday, October 3, 2006, and Wednesday, October 4, 2006. On Wednesday afternoon as we completed the traverse work and were loading up our equipment in the parking lot, a white, extended cab Chevy pickup turned in to the parking lot and came directly to us (ignoring the one-way signage). A man jumped out of the truck, muttering something under his breath, and very confrontationally demanded to know what corners we were using to locate the property boundary. I proceeded to tell him that we had used the monumented quarter corner between Sections 5 & 8 and the monumented corner of sections 5, 6, 7 & 8. Before I could even finish, he stated that the corners were all wrong and that we were wrong and didn't know what we were doing. I asked if he had any documentation to support his assertion. Very quickly, he responded "Oh, yes" and reached in the passenger side of his pickup and pulled out a folded piece of slightly yellowed paper.
As he unfolded the large drawing, well worn with use, I could see that it was a tax map showing planimetrics without aerial photography. I had previously obtained a copy of this map and I knew that it did not accurately represent the relationship between the section line (between Sections 5 & 8) and the Subdivision lots along the county road to the north. This was understandable because the plat of the Subdivision lots does not show a tie to the section corners or lines, so the people in the Assessor's office would have no idea exactly where the lots were located in Section 5. Seeing this, I told the man that what he had was only a tax map and not a survey and that it could not be relied upon to determine the location of property boundaries. He then pulled out an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper that appeared to be a copy of part of a larger drawing. It looked like some kind of display plat for the Subdivision lots, having Block designations, but no lot numbers. It was, basically, a hand drafted copy of the tax map, having no dimensions. At the bottom of the paper was the name of a Surveying Company. In addition, someone had penciled in some distances for the tract that this man claimed to own. I presume these distances were scaled from the tax map; otherwise, I have no idea where they came from.
Having seen his documentation, I pulled out my own documentation and described to him from the documents the history of the corners I was using and showed him the surveys that had been conducted in accordance with state law that demonstrated that the tax map was not a reliable source for locating the property boundary. I also directed him to a statement appearing on the face of every tax map that reads as follows:
"THIS REAL PROPERTY OWNERSHIP MAP IS FOR TAX PURPOSES ONLY AND IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR REAL PROPERTY CONVEYANCES OR DESCRIPTIONS."
I gave the man one of my business cards and asked his name, which he indicated was Mr. Unhappy. He was not convinced by my response to his claim and insisted that it was not right and that he would fight it. He claimed that some old man had told him there was a pin in the middle of the state highway that was the property corner. I told Mr. Unhappy that we had a metal detector and that we could look for this pin, if he wanted to. So, we drove up to the old frame building on the stone foundation and probed with the metal detector the area that Mr. Unhappy indicated. We found nothing.
Mr. Unhappy still insisted that where we had cut line through on the south side of the building was not right. At that point I advised Mr. Unhappy that we had not yet marked the boundary line and that preliminary indications were that the line would run through the middle of the old building. Mr. Unhappy continued to insist that this wasn't right. I asked again about the copy from the Surveying Company and he emphatically affirmed that it had come directly from the Surveying Company. I, then, told him that he should contact the Surveying Company to see what they had to say about it.
I told him that the difference in our arguments was that I was basing mine on documented corners and surveys performed in accordance with the law and he was basing his argument on a tax map. By this time, Mr. Unhappy was becoming somewhat distressed. There wasn't anything else that I could tell him that would be helpful or convince him to change his mind. When he left, he indicated that he was going to get his measuring tape and measure off the dimensions that were penciled on the Surveying Company drawing.
Some other information that was revealed in our conversation with Mr. Unhappy are as follows:
- Mr. Unhappy had a high power rifle with a scope in the floor board of his truck, like it had recently been in use or was ready to be put to use.
- Mr. Unhappy indicated that he lived back up the county road that ran through the Subdivision lots and that he owned property back there.
- He also indicated that the horseback riders interrupted his hunting.
- He advised us to carry a gun (I'm not sure if that was intended as a threat or not).
- A little later he advised us to carry a gun because of wild hogs.
- He indicated that he (or one of his companions) had killed a 300 pound wild hog "last Saturday" (we were talking to him on October 4th, so I guess the hog would have been killed on September 30th).
- He indicated a desire to fix up and use the old frame building on the stone foundation. I'm not sure why he is so interested in the old building. It is in bad shape with the front "porch" falling in. It has two millstones in the stone foundation, though, that are rather interesting.
The next day, Thursday, October 5, 2006, we returned to perform some GPS observations to ensure accuracy and to tie to the State Plane Coordinate System. We encountered Mr. Friendly again while we were performing these observations. As before, he was very interested in talking about surveying, specifically, how it related to the location of his own boundary lines. He asked me if I could survey his property on the side, to which I indicated that I could not. He then indicated that he had talked to Mr. Unhappy that morning. Mr. Unhappy had stopped to take some pictures of the old frame building on the stone foundation. Mr. Friendly indicated that Mr. Unhappy had a strong desire to keep the old building. Mr. Friendly also related to me how Mr. Unhappy had apparently talked to someone from the Agency (after talking to us) who had brought up the possibility of a land trade.
We returned to the site to mark the boundary on October 12, 2006. While there, we observed that some clearing had been done north of the old frame building on the stone foundation. It was not evident who had done the clearing or for what purpose.
On October 17, 2006 I went to the County Courthouse to search for answers to the questions that had by now developed. According to the Assessor's records, Mr. Unhappy owned four Subdivision lots, which he acquired in April 2004, October 2005 and November 2005. Each of these lots is in the neighborhood of about 1/3 acre in size. I searched the indexes from 1978 to the present and found no conveyances to Mr. Unhappy other than the four Subdivision lots. According to the Assessor's records, the tract of land with the old frame building on the stone foundation that lies in Section 5, belonged to a Real Estate Service located in an urban area.
We returned to the site in November 2006 to collect additional information needed to facilitate a land trade proposal. In the mean time, the Real Estate Manager contacted Mr. Unhappy to discuss the possibility of a land trade to resolve the situation. The Agency required some proof of ownership from Mr. Unhappy, however, since the county records showed ownership of the adjoining tract in someone else. Mr. Unhappy told the Real Estate Manager that he had the deed in hand, but that he had not at that time recorded it yet. A copy of the document obtained after it was recorded revealed that it was dated September 2, 2006, but that it was not signed and notarized until October 6, 2006, which was 2 days after our encounter in the field.
Based on the information that we collected, I provided the Real Estate Manager with three options for a proposed land trade to put Mr. Unhappy in possession of an entire building. Agency Management selected the preferred option and the Real Estate Manager presented the proposal to Mr. Unhappy for consideration.
We were again on site on Tuesday, December 19 and Wednesday, December 20, 2006 for some other survey work. We did not see Mr. Unhappy at all on Tuesday, December 19, but we did see another surveyor working at the site. Mr. Unhappy had told the surveyor that he was going to get 100 guineas and some pigs so that they would be both noisy and stinky.
On Wednesday, December 20, Mr. Unhappy stopped to talk at us. He told me that we better move those "stakes" off of his property, etc. He said that we were putting a bend in the section line. He was obviously angry and said that he would tear down his half of the old building and leave the other half. He went on to tell me that he was going to get dead hogs and leave them lay on his property so that no one would want to come to the new development. He was on his way to a doctor's appointment, so he couldn't stay long. He didn't bring up the reputed testimony of "everyone", so I didn't have an opportunity to ask to talk to his witnesses. He again stated that I was wrong in my location of the property boundary and I again inquired how he arrived at that determination and he again referred to his "plot plan," which he stated was made by a surveyor, but he couldn't remember the name. I told him that if he had any credible information contrary to what I was working with that I would be interested in examining what he had, but he would have to support his claims with credible facts.
We prepared a boundary survey for a proposed boundary line adjustment in May 2007 and filed it with the County Recorder of Deeds. Before the swap of Quit Claim deeds could proceed, though, there were, apparently, some property tax issues related to the tract that Mr. Unhappy had acquired that needed to be addressed. For whatever reason, the proposal went no further and nothing more was heard from Mr. Unhappy.
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Original composition by Steven E. Weible
