PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Mar/Apr 2019

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 15 Book Reviews M r. Portwood has done an excel- lent job overall in his research, organization, and presentation of what could have been a very dry and boring book. I found the introduction to be useful in that it reminds the surveyor of his or her role in boundary location matters. Also, the author explains the importance of these and other appel- late court cases to those in the surveying profession. A bonus that I did not expect and would not expect to see in a book like this was the introduction to cases from the period 1848 to 1859 in which the author delves deeply into the history of the Oregon Su- preme Court and first Justices. Moving on to the actual cases, I have cho- sen three to review with the first being a Multnomah County case, Hale v Cottle 28 P 901 (1892). I found this case extremely interesting as it flies in the face of what I was taught, and I’m sure many of you have been taught—the maxim that origi- nal, undisturbedGLOmonuments control, no ifs, ands, or buts! Hale v Cottle is a case involving a disputed line between DLCs in which the Court rejected origi- nal GLO stakes set during the 1850s and upon whom there had never been any reliance. There are many factors at play here that the Court considered in reach- ing its decision. I’ll let the purchaser read the full case review for the details. As with all the cases reviewed by the Author, he first presents a review of the significant components then poses key questions asked by the court along with their answer to each question. Next, he lists operative principles along with quotes directly from the bench and fin- ishes up with commentary and analysis. In my humble opinion, this format works very well to parse out the key features and principles of each case. As an aside, I did a little research of my own using Google Scholar and found Hale v Cottle cited in Trinwith v Smith 42 OR 420 (1902) for the principle that “the rule being to follow in the footsteps of the surveyor, the courses and distances control when it appears that they, rather that monu- ments, correspond with the actual lines.” The next case reviewed was Woodruff v Douglas County 21 P 49 (1889). In this case, the argument was made that for a county to establish a road, the alignment must be accurately described. The court affirmed this argument, yet Mr. Portwood notes that in a similar case, Ames v Union County 22 P 118, just three months after the Woodruff decision the court seems to “water down” the Woodruff decision somewhat. The court in Ames says that the road creation statute does not “man- date the services of a surveyor” nor must the route description embody “technical accuracy or precision.” Furthermore, the court stated that “to better accommo- date the public, it may be necessary to make some deviations” from any given surveyed route. Very interesting! The final case to comment upon is Brauns v Stearns 1 OR 367 (1861), a case from Jackson County. This case contains the court’s earliest reported definitions of patent ambiguity and latent ambiguity in a conveyance document. Along with Brauns, another 1861 case is reviewed (Guthrie v Thompson 1 OR 353) that caused the court to review the nullifi- cation of written contracts by unwritten means. The court did affirm the legality of nullifying a contract or conveyance by unwritten means. The author concludes this review by noting that Oregon’s first statute of frauds (SOF) was enacted in 1862, less than one year after the Guthrie decision and speculates that Guthrie may have been the impetus for the legisla- ture’s crafting and passing the SOF law. All in all, this book and the volumes to come should be useful to practicing sur- veyors, college surveying majors, PLS exam candidates, title company officers, practicing attorneys, and others. The for- mat and indices are comprehensive and easy to navigate. While the illustrations and maps are somewhat sparse, they are relevant and helpful to understand- ing the cases. While not all cases will be of interest to all surveyors, Mr. Portwood has chosen cases that do represent the challenges that any surveyor in Oregon could face today. At the risk of being labeled “nit picky,” I noticed that the page count in the PDF window does not correspond with the page as numbered. This is a problem that I have seen in other PDF publications and is a very small flaw in what is an excel- lent work by Mr. Portwood. I am looking forward to the next volumes since the area east of the Cascades where I live was mostly surveyed from the late 1860s into the 1890s with settlement and development escalating during the ear- ly 1900s. I hope to see some cases from Crook, Jefferson, and Deschutes Counties. Thank you Brian Portwood for a job well done!  x Scott C. Freshwater’s Review A bonus that I did not expect and would not expect to see in a book like this was the introduction to cases from the period 1848 to 1859 in which the Author delves deeply into the history of the Oregon Supreme Court and first Justices.