Is it Illegal to....

[txdon]

....remove a land boundary survey marker? I know it is not nice, but is there a law with a penalty attached?
By the way, I'm not planning on doing it. It was just a local discussion about a farmer and a plow. I can't seem to find the law, if there is one.
Thanks.

 

[Egon]

In our area it will be illegal. Yours could be different.

 

[LBrown59]

What about an illegally placed one?

 

[mikim]

sounds like a Bernice question -- I'll refer it to her ......

 

[Egon]

What about an illegally placed one?

That sounds self explanatory

 

[Dusty]

In CT, if the marker was set by a licensed surveyor, then it is illegal to tamper with it in any way...... even if it isn't in the correct place. Surveyors will not remove a marker even if it is located incorrectly, unless they were the one that placed it. They will show the marker on the maps that they draw and indicate that it isn't correct, but they will never remove a marker placed by another surveyor. If they don't know who placed it, it is assumed that it was done by a surveyor. When my land was surveyed, the surveyor placed some pins that were off set in the woods, so if the originals were ever pulled, he could reset them without any problem. The day after he put the originals in on the boundary, someone pulled them. He put them back and set them down a couple of inches below grade, so they couldn't be pulled again. Through the freeze and thaw cycles, they came to the surface and were pulled again. The next time that they will be set, it will be in concrete, and I would like to see how they will pull those. Just because it is illegal, doesn't mean that stupid people will ignore the law.
Dusty

 

[LBrown59]

What about an illegally placed one?

That sounds self explanatory

Well
Yes and No
May Be

 

[EddieWalker]

Not sure about the law, but proving that somebody took them out is the tough part. My parents couldn't find all their pins when they bought there place in California and hired a surveyor to find them. He couldn't find two I think and set them correctly. It was obvious that the nieghbor had removed them, or moved them, because they had built there house across the property line.

The title company was called in, but they were pretty much useless. In the end, a land swap was agreed upon, but nobody could prove the neighbor had moved the pins. They obviously said they built based on the location of the pins and even knew exactly where they were. Nobody could find them, but they knew. Isn't that funny???

Have you asked your surveyor?

Eddie

 

[Bird]

I don't know of any law addressing the surveyors' markers specifically, but I do believe that Section 28.03 of the Penal Code (Criminal Mischief) would apply. So, based on that, I would say it would be illegal.

 

[hsdfcu]

..and who will enforce any laws? Prove it was there? Most will not care.

 

[jinman]

Don, I believe Bird hit the nail on the head with criminal mischief. You would have to prove intent. A farmer snagging a survey marker with his plow would be hard to prove as intentional unless he knocked down a corner post in the process.

My dad's property had old Model A axles driven into the ground as survey markers. If you came across an axle in the ground, would you think it was a survey marker? Hmm...

When I had a property line survey done, the surveyor told me he drove one pin into the ground 18" deep and then put another on top of it. He said very few people would pull up a stake and then dig down to find another one. I guess you could find a stake that deep with a good metal detector, but not any I've ever used.

 

[Bird]

..and who will enforce any laws? Prove it was there? Most will not care.

It's most likely not a matter of caring or not caring; it's a matter of having evidence that a court will accept. And yes, it would difficult to enforce or prove a case unless there's an eyewitness.

 

[scott_vt]

Afternoon Don,
Thats an interesting question. My first thought is yes, it would be illegal to tamper with a surveyors pin IMHO. Im sure various law applies from state to state and possibly even county to county.

On my Vt property I have one pin at the bottom of my hill that the neighbor hit with one of his mowers. The funny part is that he hit and bent the pin in my favor Although Im sure a few inches one way or the other wouldnt make much of a difference on a 10 acre lot I often thought about removing that pin and getting a long thin granite stone and burying it in that spot, but after reading this thread maybe I will just leave well enough alone !

 

[MikePA]

....remove a land boundary survey marker? I know it is not nice, but is there a law with a penalty attached?
By the way, I'm not planning on doing it. It was just a local discussion about a farmer and a plow. I can't seem to find the law, if there is one.
Thanks.

When I worked for my FIL, who was a civil engineer, all survey markers were installed flush with the ground, i.e., low enough to not be hit by a lawn mower. We did this for all types of markers, e.g., concrete, oak, rebar. So, it's conceivable someone could hit it inadvertantly with a plow.

We also installed a guard stake with a brightly colored ribbon tied to it so the property owner could easily see where the property corners were.

When we were in the midst of a boundary dispute, one of the 'combatants' would invariably walk up as we were leaving and pull out the guard stake and toss it, thinking they were accomplishing something.

Since the person who hired us owned the marker and the guard stake, if someone else deliberately destroyed it, it'd be no different than someone destroying someone elses property therefore the police would enforce it. As Bird pointed out, proving who did it might prove difficult.

I am not aware of any laws in PA that make it illegal to tamper with survey markers.

 

[tallyho8]

An interesting side to this story is a fact that no two surveyors may agree on the same spot. When I built my store, the surveyor marked the 4 corners before I started and the forms were built on these corners which were 8' from the property line as the law states. When we completed the building, it had to be re-surveyed for the occupancy certificate. The surveyor sent out a different crew and this survey said it was 6' from the property line and they denied my occupancy certificate. I went back to the surveyor and he said there was a "mistake" and he simply redrew the survey and marked 8' on it and I went back and got my occupancy certificate. To this day I don't know which survey was actually correct.

 

[Bird]

An interesting side to this story is a fact that no two surveyors may agree on the same spot. When I built my store, the surveyor marked the 4 corners before I started and the forms were built on these corners which were 8' from the property line as the law states. When we completed the building, it had to be re-surveyed for the occupancy certificate. The surveyor sent out a different crew and this survey said it was 6' from the property line and they denied my occupancy certificate. I went back to the surveyor and he said there was a "mistake" and he simply redrew the survey and marked 8' on it and I went back and got my occupancy certificate. To this day I don't know which survey was actually correct.

Therein lies what is apparently a common problem. When I bought 10 acres in the country, I borrowed a little money from the little local country bank; i.e., a mortgage. The property was fenced, and there was a steel or iron pipe marker driven in the ground at each corner. Each one stuck up out of the ground 2 to 3 inches. The title company didn't care whether I had a survey done and the banker said he didn't care; that on the last "farm" type land he had surveyed, he had 3 different surveyors do it and came up with 3 different answers. So I didn't have a survey done, but all the paperwork showed the property to be a perfect rectangle containing exactly 10 acres. But then when I sold the place 8 years later, my buyer wanted a survey (and was willing to pay for it himself, so naturally that was agreeable to me and I suggested that he select the surveyor himself). The surveyor came up with numbers that made it appear that one end of the property was about 3 inches wider than the other end, and showed that I actually had 10.01 acres. I told the buyer I should have priced it higher if I'd known I had more land than I thought.

 

[Dusty]

Today with modern equipment, it is getting harder to get two surveys that don't agree. Problem is where they have to go back to a bench mark to start the survey and an error occurs. Today with GPS they can do all that work electronically, and there are fewer mistakes. When I had land surveyed 30 years ago, the old fellow said that all the stakes in the ground were right on the mark. The neighbor didn't like that and had his land surveyed. His surveyor came up with the same results, so he hired another hoping to get different results. Same results again. He finally resigned himself that he was cutting grass on someone else's land and didn't have as large of a front yard as he thought.
Dusty

 

[randy41]

so if you pull up a stake and theres no one around to see you do it is it illegal?
if a tree falls in a forest and theres no one around to hear it does it make any noise?
a neighbor once told me that some of my land really belonged to my neighbor across the road because the road was one of the boundaries and the road has moved since the original survey. but i have a survey that shows the road where it is now. i think there is a common law that land you consider yours and you make use of as if it is yours and there has been no complaint about it for 7 years then the land is actually yours. ok...so i didnt really pay close attention when i took business law.

 

[coveredbridge]

I think the common law principle you're referring to is called "adverse possession". As I understand it, if one possesses what is legally another person's real estate for a continuous period of 21 years, and the owner has taken no action during that period to assert his property rights, then the person that maintained possession for 21 years would have "adverse possession" as a defense should the owner seek to assert his property rights in the future.

 

[zeuspaul]

GPS does reduce measurement errors. However you will still find discrepancies between surveyors. GPS is only as good as the user. It still has to be *calibrated* to monuments on the ground. And the monuments on the ground may or not define the property.

The deed may indicate 1000 feet TO the 2 inch iron pipe. The best GPS can do is go almost exactly 1000 feet in a specific direction. BUT the deed doesn't say to go 1000 ft! It says to go TO the iron pipe. The iron pipe may be 999 ft but it would hold over the 1000 ft because of the word TO. UNLESS of course there is a conflict with the neighboring property. What if the iron pipe is 1 ft into the neighbors property? And the neighbors property is a senior deed? Then the pipe doesn't hold and the 1000 ft doesn't hold. The neighbors property would act as a limit.

GPS has to start somewhere other than the geometry from the satellites. The earth plates move and property moves with them. In California it is about an inch per year. So if you use *pure* geometry from GPS your property line would move about an inch per year...depending on where you live. So you still have to tie the system to monuments on the ground as defined by the deed. And you have to determine whether or not a found monument holds. And you will find differences between surveyors as all measurements have errors. And you will find differences between surveyors as judgement calls may be made differently...what to hold? angle? distance? monument? missing monuments? acreage?...

Zeuspaul