PLSO The Oregon Surveyor November/December 2021

12 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 6 Featured Article Here are two common examples of how surveying and law can intersect. Example One: Adverse Possession According to Lexico.com, adverse pos- session is, “The occupation of land to which another person has title with the intention of possessing it as one’s own.” In one case, a lake property owner was concerned the adjoining neighbor was en- croaching upon her property. She hired a surveyor to survey her property, find or install corner hubs, and stake the lines. According to theproperty’s legal description in county records, the surveyor discovered that the plat map for the lake subdivision in which the client’s property was located had been developed over 100 years ago. Themap showed that each lakefront prop- erty had lake frontage of 100 feet. When the surveyor staked his client’s property, he found that the adjoining neighbor had apparently encroached on five waterfront feet of his client’s property, giving his client 95 feet of lakefront and the neighbor 105 lakefront feet. The surveyor’s client was livid. She want- ed the surveyor to talk to the neighbor. Instead, the surveyor advised his client that she had paid for the survey, which documented the facts of the legal bound- aries of her property according to the legal description of the property that was filed with the county. The surveyor recommended to his client that she take any property question of dispute with her neighbor to her attor- ney so she could obtain a legal opinion. He reiterated that his job as surveyor was to document the factual boundaries of the property, not to interpret the law. Example 2: Timber Trespass and Triple Damages According to Chenoweth Law Group in Portland, Oregon, “Individuals and busi- nesses can find themselves involved in a timber trespass claim in Oregon or Washington. Timber trespass aris- es when someone cuts trees or shrubs belonging to someone else. Sometimes timber trespass results from actual theft of commercial timber or the intentional killing of trees standing in the way of a neighbor’s scenic view, but more often, it is the result of a dispute over who owns the property on which the timber sits.” In one case, a surveyor was hired by a timber company in Washington State to survey a 300-acre tract of land. The southern boundary of the parcel abutted a 75-acre private forest that was owned by another party. The surveyor set the corners, flagged and staked the lines—and then he did some- thing else. He set a line that was 30 feet inside of the timber company’s proper- ty that indicated where the tree cutting was to stop. The surveyor then contacted the owner of the 75-acre private forest that bor- dered the 300 acres. Both surveyor and the private landowner physically inspect- ed the boundary line between the two continued T