We've found ourselves in an absolutely awful litigation hell based entirely on a defective survey ordered by an adjoining landowner. I'd like to run this by professionals in this group to get insight and advice on the best ways to handle the situation.
About four years ago, my dad bought a parcel of about 105 acres in West Virginia. Prior to his purchase, ownership was with a single family starting with the original purchase in 1911, eventually expanding to the 105 acres by 1923 through acquisitions.
The previous owners commissioned a survey and consolidation of the different parcels into a single tract. The survey was completed and fully documented in 2006.
Very soon after his purchase, an adjoining landowner met us at the property and asserted a right of way to his property through ours. He stated that there was previous civil litigation that resulted in a documented right of way across our property, but there was nothing in our deed or survey to indicate that. However, dad wanted to be a good neighbor and told the guy that if he brought legal evidence of the road, dad would ensure that it was properly reflected on our deed.
Despite numerous requests to get the legal documentation, the guy stalled on providing it, but he continued to use his claimed road to access his property. Eventually, we were able to speak to the previous owner of both our property and the guy's property. Both of them patently rejected the claim of any such road across our land. On the basis of this, we blocked the guy's access and told him to use his historic right of way that's been in place for over 100 years.
The above information isn't direct related to surveys, but its importance will be evident in a moment, so bear with me.
Soon after, the adjoining landowner commissioned a survey of his own property. He had two deeds from approximately 1892, one of 61 acres, another of approximately 24 acres. The larger parcel was correctly placed by his surveyor, but the smaller parcel was not. The errant survey was for 12 acres, and he placed it squarely within the boundaries of our farm. It literally bisected our entire property, so that we owned some on one side of his survey, some on the other, and his client had the 12 acres in between. Incidentally, this 'survey' was dropped in the immediate vicinity of the road that his client had been demanding. The surveyor later testified under oath in court that he got a plat map from *his client*, loaded into GIS and drug it around until he identified a place that it appeared to 'fit', and called it a survey. He completely ignored the fact that he 'fit' it entirely within the interior boundaries of of our property.
We first learned of the adjacent owner's survey when we arrived to our farm and found that our property that was previously posted with our name/address was now posted with the name of the adjoining owner. When we called the adjacent landowner, we were advised that the surveyor placed it there, and that he'd trade the land back to us for a deeded right of way across our land.
Rather than make that deal, we contracted an independent surveyor to determine the 'true' location of this guy's land. After months of research going back to the original land grant in 1814, our surveyor determined that the original surveyor was off by a half a mile in his placement. As is apparently customary with surveyors, our surveyor requested a meeting with the adjacent owner's surveyor to discuss deeds, boundaries, documentation. The other surveyor offered no evidence to support his own placement, and simply said that it would be decided in court. Our surveyor then reached out to a third independent surveyor to review documentation. The independent surveyor also found that the original surveyor was off by a half mile. On the advice of our surveyor, we filed a legal injunction to keep the adjoining landowner from building a road across land that he now saw as 'his' based on his survey.
About this time, we also filed a complaint with the state Board of Professional surveyors alleging multiple minimum standards violations. The Board kept the complaint at arms length due to ongoing civil litigation, and declined to investigate at all while litigation was ongoing.
Eventually, when we did go to court, the original surveyor openly testified in court that he obtained his plat map from his client, loaded into GIS and dragged it around until he found a place where it fit, and placed the land there on our property. He acknowledged that he found no natural monuments specified in the deed, that he located no adjoining landowners, and that he researched no adjoining deeds. He simply dragged and dropped the plat onto our land.
The circuit court eventually found entirely in our favor on the issue of land ownership and right of way. The judge openly stated that the original surveyor's work was to be stricken from the deed records in the county, and that the surveyor's work was basically shoddy and lacked any visible support other than the 'drag/drop' method that the surveyor readily admitted to.
With the civil litigation concluded, the Board finally commissioned an independent investigator to assess our complaint against the original surveyor. The investigator cited numerous minimum standards violations, and found the original surveyor's work 'incompetent' and 'professionally negligent', and pointedly said that the surveyor offered no documentation at all to support his placement on our land.
Now to my question. The Board has dragged this investigation and hearing out for over two and a half years now. A hearing was scheduled for May of this year, but the surveyor filed for a continuance to get a lawyer. It was rescheduled for October the 15th, but the day before I was to appear as a witness, the Assistant AG called me and said that the hearing is postponed while the Board works out a disciplinary action with the surveyor's counsel. It likely will involve working under the supervision of another surveyor for a limited time.
Is there anything that I can do as a complainant to compel the Board to take the complaint seriously? I feel like the Board has slow walked the investigation from the outset, and that their entire focus has been on defending the surveyor, not disciplining him. This is a surveyor with 40 years experience, so it isn't as if he didn't know that simply dragging and dropping a survey onto an adjoining owner was bad form. What he did *should* be illegal and I would think a strong basis for license revocation. Instead, it feels like they're slapping him on the wrist for major Board violations and a complete, utter breach of public trust.
How can a complainant demand justice when surveyor act completely without regard for professional ethics and violate many minimum standards? Is there someone above the Board that can review the Board's decisions?
If you've made it this far, I thank you for reading. If you have a professional opinion to offer, I thank you even more. This situation happened to my father, and in the 3 and a half years since it occurred, he's fallen ill and passed away. He left this hearing and the action before the Board for me to wrap up, and I feel powerless to ensure justice because it seems as if the Board is in it for the surveyor far more than they are for the public.
