A Little Known Legal Issue

[tabdog]

Hi folks,

I am a retired land surveyor as well as an avid MDer.

Do you find people's property corners for them?

If you try to locate a person's property corners, and you have
struck up a contract, you could be violating a state law. It may
be that the contract is just verbal.

In any state I know of, it is not legal to practice surveying with
out a license.

What if they got sued because of your property location.

Say they built a building on someones else's property.

You could be sued for money as well as prosecuted for practicing
surveying without a license, especially if you got paid.

It is not likely to happen, but it could.

Do not trust what they tell you. You will take on some responsibility
unless other wise stipulated.

There are already far too many property disputes. They are the most
common type of case on the state's higher court's dockets around here.

How qualified are you?

Happy Huntin,

Tabdog

 

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[Woodland Detectors]

In Michigan, it's not illegal to locate property irons. It is illegal for a person to set, tamper with or disturb property irons and any other survey markers unless you are employed by a registered land surveyor or you are an RLS.
If I'm asked to locate property markers I always assume that there is a property dispute between the neighbors so I let the person requesting my service see where the metal detector is beeping and let them dig after I tell them the above information and after I'm gone. If you feel there is something mysterious going on, go with your gut feeling and leave the site.
Jon

....


Didn't you know?

It's a conspiracy, maaan


Go Redwings

 

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[stetson]

As long as you don't move an existing stake, set a stake or
make claims of the accuracy of the stakes you will have no problems
in California. California is about as picky as it gets.

Remember all you are doing is finding something that already was surveyed.

Finding an existing corner stake is not surveying.

 

[vondrewvious]

If this ever happened, I would advise the property owner to just move the stake. Voila, then fence is now on your side.

LOL

 

[BuckleBoy]

This post is just a bunch of Fear-Mongering. I stand by Mark S.'s assesment of this non-issue. He has more experience at legal issues and metal detecting than most of you even know.

Chill out, Tab Dog. Delete this silly topic.



-Buck

 

[Lowbatts]

Boy oh boy am I in trouble. Been working sidewalk tearups again. Any guess on how many pins get pulled by the gradall and the bobcat?

When I find them laying in the middle of the bed I pick them up and toss them back on one side of the sidewalk or the other, before they get tamped and poured on.

Once in a while, in fact about 4 times this week, I marked them for the forming and tamping crews so they would not tear them out by mistake. That may means I isolated and identified them as a component of someone's property but not as a boundary or property line.

Also did this with a few gas lines that were unusually shallow and mis-marked by the flaggers from the gas company so they wouldn't get punched by the cat.

These incidental acts were coincidental to my main purpose, locating coinage and relics. As an aside, a couple of the property owners thanked me and the crew doing the work was happy for my input.

Heck I'd bet even the gas company had no problem with me helping prevent a possible rupture.

No harm, no foul. And the beepin' was goooood. But then that's just us simple folk doing what we do, the right thing, w/o regard to overly bureaucratic nincompoops, ninnyhammers and killjoys.