May June 2018

27 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Note from the Editor In Brian Portwood’s article on a continuation of the Federal Land Rights series that appears in the March/April issue of The Oregon Surveyor , we left out one important ingredient that needed to accompany it: the footnotes. They were inadver- tently omitted from the March/April issue, even though they should have accompanied it. They are listed below. Note from the Editor 1) See “Does every issue generated by the presence of an easement constitute a title issue?” published by Multibriefs for NSPS News & Views in September of 2015, for a review of several cases potentially signifying an emerging Circuit split over exactly what conditions or circumstances are required to trigger QTA jurisdiction. 2) See “Contrasting boundaries of title and boundaries of jurisdiction in the context of the federal Submerged Lands Act” published by Multibriefs for NSPS News & Views in April of 2016. See also “Can ignorance of federal law carry implications that are powerful enough to effectively negate certain aspects of state law?” published by Multibriefs for NSPS News & Views in July of 2016. See also “Examining adjudication pertaining to federal title interests beyond the federal Quiet Title Act” published by Multibriefs for NSPS News & Views in January of 2017. All of these articles are available in pdf form at no charge through an internet keyword search. 3) The 1873 GLO township plat, depicting the conditions in the relevant area at the time of the original survey, can be readily obtained using the plat search feature which is provided on the website maintained by the Oregon/Washington office of the BLM, go to www.blm.gov/or/landrecords. 4) Refer to Section 3-81 of the BLM Manual of 1973 for a discussion of the factors involved in federal lot creation, including the modern perspective on proper acreage limitations. 5) No citation is available for this Whatcom County court case, since it never reached the appellate level. 6) See Vanderpol v Swinger, United States District Court for the District of Western Washington, ruling dated 8/8/12 (2012 WL 3887161). 7) See Vanderpol v Swinger, United States District Court for the District of Western Washington, ruling dated 12/17/12 (2012 WL 6590864). 8) See Vanderpol v Swinger, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ruling dated 11/10/15 (622 Fed Appx 642). 9) See Swinger v Vanderpol, Court of Appeals of Washington, Division One, ruling dated 12/27/16 (2016 Wash App Lexis 3075). 10) The phrase “res judicata” substantially means that any given matter or issue has been judicially placed at rest, having been authoritatively resolved and placed in repose through due process of law, so that particular matter or issue is no longer subject to disturbance through redundant litigation. 11) The result reached by the Washington Court of Appeals leaves Vanderpol with a clouded title and uncertain acreage, due to the interaction between his property and the adjoining federal property during the process through which the accretion zone that comprised the disputed ground was physically formed by the river’s movement. However, this formal elimination of Swinger from the legal equation paves the way for Vanderpol and the BLM to collaboratively reach and implement an accretion division agreement, finally defining the exact location of the boundary between Lot 8 and Lot 9 within the area between the historical and contemporary river channels, independently and without any interference from others, should they deem it appropriate or necessary to do so. 12) The phrase “pro se” means to act in one’s own favor, and in the judicial context it refers to any individual who elects to personally advocate and argue his or her own legal position before a court, rather than obtaining the assistance of legal counsel for that purpose. Most pro se litigants are attorneys, who are qualified to represent themselves and therefore feel confident that they need no assistance in presenting their case, but those who are not attorneys can and do also sometimes choose to act pro se. The results achieved by pro se litigants are, not surprisingly, quite poor, they rarely prevail, and in many instances the insuf- ficiency of their knowledge of the law is exposed, to their great embarrassment, as illustrated by the outcome which Swinger experienced here.