Deed stakers dilemma
Considering the following from a Colorado case, cited from California, Idaho and law encyclopedia’s, if a surveyor stakes the deed where acquiescence has occurred where should he stake the lines?
From: Salazar v. Terry, 911 P. 2d 1086 – Colo: Supreme Court 1996
Justice KOURLIS dissenting:
An acquiesced boundary often will not lie on the surveyor’s true location. When this occurs, the legal effect of the doctrine of acquiescence is to rewrite the deed or document of title by operation of law to reflect the acquiesced change so that the agreed upon boundary becomes the true dividing line. Duncan v. Peterson, 3 Cal.App.3d 607, 83 Cal.Rptr. 744, 746 (1970); Edgeller v. Johnston, 74 Idaho 359, 262 P.2d 1006, 1010 (1953). An acquiesced line “becomes, in law, the true line called for by the respective descriptions, regardless of the accuracy of the agreed location.” Young v. Blakeman, 153 Cal. 477, 95 P. 888, 890 (1908). “Thus, if the distance call in the deed is ‘500 feet,’ it may henceforth be treated as if it read ‘517 feet’ or ‘483 feet,’ and every future deed of the land which copies or incorporates the original description will also be so read.” Roger A. Cunningham et al., The Law of Property å¤ 11.8, at 765 (1984). See also Olin L. Browder, The Practical Location of Boundaries, 56 Mich.L.Rev. 487, 530 (1958).
The policy underlying this construction of the language in the deed is the doctrine of repose, or “the notion that the law ought not to tinker with the well-settled and long-held understanding of the people involved, even if it does not comport with their documents.” Cunningham et al., supra, at 766. See also 12 Am.Jur.2d Boundaries å¤ 85 (1964). As the California Supreme Court has reasoned, measurements made at different times, by different persons, and with different instruments will usually vary, and that:
If the position of the line always remained to be ascertained by measurement alone, the result would be that it would not be a fixed boundary, but would be subject to change with every new measurement. Such uncertainty and instability in the title to land would be intolerable.
Young, 95 P. at 889. Hence, boundary lines which have been recognized for the statutory period are regarded in law as being the true and permanent boundaries described by the language in the deed.Once the original language in the deed has been effectively changed in accordance with the acquiesced boundaries, a conveyance by that original description should be presumed to have been intended to refer to the boundaries as fixed by such acquiescence unless there is specific language to the contrary. Young, 95 P. at 891.
Log in to reply.