Lucas & Company, LLC

Land Surveyor as Equity Judge

Land Surveyor as Equity Judge – Half Day or Full Day (Nominally 4.0 or 8.0 Contact Hours)
Over 125 years ago, Justice Cooley wrote and spoke about the quasi-judicial function of the land surveyor when performing the surveyor’s role as a retracing surveyor. Why did he make this comparison in this context? Does the land surveyor truly have a quasi-judicial function, and if so, how does that compare and contrast with the function of the law judge sitting on the bench or the jury sitting in the jury box? While Cooley might be the most prominent voice to talk about the surveyor’s quasi-judicial functions, he certainly wasn’t the only one to do so. Z.A. Enos (Ill. c.1890), F. Hodgman (Mich. c.1890), A.C. Mulford (N.Y. c.1900), and Frank Emerson Clark (Minn. c.1920), are a few of the earlier voices on this same subject. In more recent years notable surveyors such as Ira Tillotson (c.1974), Henry Sipe (c.1974), Dean & McEntyre (c.1974), and Williams & Onsrud (c.1986), discussed the surveyor’s role as judge and jury when it comes to final boundary decisions. In this seminar we will take these discussions deeper to understand what they all were talking about and to shed light on the surveyor’s role as an equity judge. PowerPoint presentation.
OBJECTIVES: To enhance professional competency and improve practitioner’s knowledge of the law as it relates to the practice of land surveying.