Robert Frost once wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors." The most benign of nuisances can escalate into major confrontations, where mistrust and suspicion…
Author: Joel M. Leininger, LS
Abandoning Evidentiary Retracement
What persuades surveyors to believe that boundary retracement must eventually be driven from evidence to mathematics? Some introspective surveyors believe that within a…
Monitoring the Standard of Care
As bizarre as it may seem, we are not expected to be perfect. Avoiding negligence simply requires "reasonable and prudent" conduct. The courts…
The Folly of Finality
"That the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor right over it. The portion occupied by…
On Controlling Grants
It has been convenient for some surveyors to claim that their only obligation in boundary retracement was to retrace the deed calls on…
Understanding Principles and Issues
Not long ago I attended a committee meeting with some surveyors to discuss a common response to an issue that had arisen. During…
Of Cathedrals And Surveys
It sometimes seems as if surveyors, as a group, have the world’s largest inferiority complex. For people as opinionated as we are, this…
The Case Against Positional Tolerance
Positional tolerance is becoming the darling of surveyors searching for an acceptable alternative to traverse "precision" tables for boundary surveys. While not new,…
How Private Are Records?
Many surveyors routinely research private surveying records in the course of conducting boundary surveys. After instrumentation, knowledge of boundary law, and recorded evidence…
Point to Point: On Chronological Retracement
A 85Kb PDF of this article as it appeared in the magazine—complete with images—is available by clicking HERE