The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 38, No. 4
10
G
oing without Errors and Omissions insurance
(commonly known as professional liability) is much
like playing Russian roulette. The consequences of
having to ante up a ton of money to remedy a mistake may
not result in your own demise, but almost certainly may
end in the demise of your sole proprietorship. You know,
that business you labored so hard to build for so many
years, sacrificing time with your children, grandchildren,
your significant other and probably many social connections
that required your physical presence to nurture.
I have to insert some disclaimers before I paint this
picture. First, I have no affiliation with any insurance carrier
so don’t expect any information regarding the costs of this
type of coverage or who the providers might be. Second,
the decision to carry E & O insurance is yours and yours
alone, made from an informed position shared with the
carrier of your choice. Finally, the case I’m about to make is
mostly fictitious, but does represent a collection of my
perspectives based on more than 40 years of land surveying
experience.
The call
It’s about 3:00 pm on a Friday afternoon. The phone rings
and of course you’re looking for more work to pay for that
orthodontia your nearly teenage daughter simply must
have. You pick up the receiver (sorry, now it’s more likely
your cell phone but I did mention how long I’ve been in
practice) and offer your usual business greeting, shortly
discovering that this distraught female caller has waited
about three months beyond the limits of her patience
before making the call. She has endured months of harass
ment at the hands of her neighbor over a disagreement
regarding the location of their common boundary. What
you don’t know at this early phase of negotiations is that
this woman is a transplanted Californian and her hostile
neighbor, who looks upon Californians as aliens, bought
his property nearly 40 years ago.
The property she purchased last year is in a rural,
unincorporated area of the county; she has lots of money
and is willing to pay someone well if the results of their
work meet her high (though perhaps unreasonable)
expectations. This woman is used to getting her way after
many years as a successful actress in Hollywood and
therefore possesses a sense of entitlement that you are
unprepared for. She has decided to raise a very exotic type
of farm animal, an animal whose fur is highly regarded by
boutique clothing manufacturers (who of course will pay a
premium for this fur) and is so well connected and such a
ERRORS AND OMISSIONS INSURANCE
The Case for Carrying E & O Insurance
natural salesperson that her farm output is contractually
backlogged for more than five years. Almost immediately
after closing on the sale of the property, she needed to build
some extremely sturdy fences to contain her animals (fences
that wouldn’t really blend with the forest environment
within which they’d be built), so she hired a local surveyor
to set stakes along her boundaries in advance of the fencing
contractor whom she’d retained for their construction.
The hostile neighbor waited until the fence-building project
was completed and land clearing was well under way before
voicing his disagreement over the location of the fences.
Due to the wishes of his client, the local surveyor that did
the layout for the fences never talked with this seemingly
unfriendly neighbor.
The research
After getting the distraught woman to calm down, you find
out that she obtained your name from her attorney (do you
hear any warning bells yet?) and that you were highly
recommended for the work. Of course, she wants to know
how much she’ll have to pay for your services, but you’ve
made it a standard practice to do your research before
preparing an “informed” estimate. Giving her assurances
that you will call her back, you make it clear that you must
do some research first. To expedite your research, you ask
her if she has a copy of the deed (she does), whether she has
a copy of her title report (assuming she paid for one) and if
she has done research of her own in the public records to
see if any surveys have been performed in the vicinity of
her property (she has not). You request that she mail you a
copy of the deed and the title report. Almost as an
afterthought, you ask her to include a copy of the recorded
survey prepared for the fencing contractor. A brief silence
ensues, after which she remarks that the fencing surveyor
did not record a survey as no permanent monuments were
set (obviously his words, he merely set wooden form stakes
for the fencing contractor to follow). She could, however,
provide a copy of his work map. You tell her that once you
receive the information you’ve requested and have had time
to conduct a little research within the public record, you
will call her back with your decision whether to take on the
job and, if so, how much it will cost. Of course, she wants
to know how long
that
will take.
A copy of the deed shows up in the following week and
things appear simple (do you hear another warning bell?).
The property is a metes and bounds description of a ten-
acre tract (the section, township and range don’t matter at
this point) with one exception; the point of beginning
Greg Crites, PLS
