California Adverse Possession and Prescriptive Easements

http://www.calrealestatelawyersblog.com/

California adverse possession and prescriptive easement law has undergone some evolution in California since its rural beginnings. Now commonly claimed in urban areas, the courts had modified the available remedies.

Adverse possession is the process in which someone acquires ownership of another's land. The claimant must prove:
(1) possession under claim of right or color of title;
(2) actual, open, and notorious occupation of the premises constituting reasonable notice to the true owner;
(3) possession which is adverse and hostile to the true owner;
(4) continuous possession for at least five years; and
(5) payment of all taxes assessed against the property during the five-year period.
Mehdizadeh v. Mincer @ 1305

A prescriptive easement is the process by which one acquires only the right to use the land of another. To establish an easement by prescription, the claimant must meet the following four tests:
(1) The claimant must occupy or utilize the land in circumstances providing reasonable notice to the owner.
(2) The occupancy or use must be continuous and uninterrupted for five years. The period for both is established in the Code of Civil Procedure. (Occasional use of a road, e.g. on weekends, would create a right to use it with the same frequency.)
(3) The use must be under color of title (a written or deeded easement, though it may be incorrect or in the wrong location) or claim of right (claiming a right to use the property, though not founded on a written instrument; the claim need not be based on a good faith belief in the title.)
(4) The claimant's use must be exclusive and "hostile" to the owner's title (not in the common sense of hostility, but rather unaccompanied by recognition of the right of the true owner to bar the claimant from use.) Mehdizadeh @ 1305.

Experienced Sacramento real estate attorneys often see the problem arising in the case of residential neighbors with a fence between them. For some reason, one party, we'll call the surprised neighbor, finds that the fence encroaches on their side of the property line- the encroacher has gained another foot or two in their backyard. The encroacher has had a garden in this area, or a driveway, for twenty years. The sad neighbor complains, the neighbors are at arms, and someone files suit.
The encroacher claims an exclusive prescriptive easement; after all, it's fenced, he has had 100% use for more then five years. But California courts do not agree. An exclusive prescriptive easement, which as a practical matter completely prohibits the true owner from using his land, has no application to a simple backyard dispute. As stated in Silacci v. Abramson, an easement is merely the right to use the land of another for a specific purpose--most often, the right to cross the land of another. An easement acquired by prescription is one acquired by adverse use for a certain period. An easement, however, is not an ownership interest, and certainly does not amount to a fee simple estate.
Thus, the courts are not inclined to grant exclusive rights in the usual case. However, they do have the power to reach an "equitable" or fair solution that is technically different from a prescriptive easement. It can grant the trespasser some legal rights, and also require them to pay for them.

Klima Land Surveys in POB Magazine

http://digital.bnpmedia.com/publication/?i=97191&p=32

Yours truly in an interview with Alexis Brumm with POB Magazine. Click the link to read the entire article.

Surveying question on Jeopardy

Love your local Land Surveyor

• The Final Jeopardy question (2/6/2012), in the category “Colonial History” was:
  
  “A 1763 letter said that these two men were equipped with “instruments … to look at the posts in the line for ten or twelve miles.”

The long answer:

American Heritage Magazine

February 1964 Volume 15, Issue 2

Mason & Dixon: their Line and its Legend - By A. HUGHLETT MASON and WILLIAM F. SWINDLER

Lines on maps may be drawn by engineers, but they are interpreted by political events.

Seldom has history recorded an amicable and abiding acceptance of such demarcations

when they involve restless dynastic movements, whether the example be Pope Alexander

VI’s division of the New World in 1493 between Spain and Portugal, or the twentieth

century’s unhappy establishment of the border between East and West Berlin after World

War II. The surveyor’s work becomes a symbol, and his name may become a catch

phrase for a congeries of political and social issues of which he never dreamed.

The prime illustration of such an event in the United States is the line laid out for a total

of about 332 miles by two English astronomer-surveyors between 1763 and 1767, to

settle a dispute between the Perms and the Baltimores. For more than eighty years these

powerful proprietaries had contended over the precise location of their common border.

When they finally settled upon these two scientists to direct an impersonal,

mathematically dependable survey, they set the stage for an engineering feat of

impressive dimensions for that time.

But Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were destined to be remembered for their

substantial engineering and scientific accomplishments only in the annals of specialists.

Mason, among other things, later completed a catalogue of 387 stars, which, when

incorporated into a nautical almanac published in 1787, became the standard authority on

the subject for a number of years. Dixon, a county surveyor and amateur astronomer, was

considered sufficiently adept in his field to be elected to the Royal Society. He took part

in several overseas scientific expeditions for the Society.”

For considerably more than a century, however, what the average American has

understood by the Mason-Dixon survey has been a figurative division between two

frames of reference in national life. Just as the South—and, for that matter, the North—

tended to become a state of mind, so the Mason-Dixon Line has come to be viewed only

incidentally as a real border and more as a line of transition between these two states of

mind. In the national psychology it is thought of as a jagged extension of the border

between Pennsylvania and Maryland to some vaguely defined point on the Missouri-

Kansas border.

Just when this popular concept first took shape is not easy to say. Obviously, as sectional

consciousness in the matter of slavery increased in the first half of the nineteenth century,

the fact that Maryland, the most northerly slave state, was divided from Pennsylvania’s

free soil by the Mason-Dixon survey impressed itself upon the public mind. The Ohio

River, as the border between the southern state of Kentucky and the Northwest Territory,

where slavery was prohibited, was a natural landmark extending the symbolism of the

Mason-Dixon Line, the western terminus of which lay close to that great waterway to the

West. Finally, the Missouri Compromise, fixing the northern limit of slave territory at

latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes north, westward from the Ohio’s juncture with the

Mississippi, completed the popular image.

The issues which thus developed in the nineteenth century around Mason and Dixon’s

survey, and made their names a household phrase, have largely obscured the significant

political and scientific results of the original project. That project—a border settlement of

the eighteenth century—in turn traced its beginnings to issues which arose in the

seventeenth century, and even earlier. The problem really started with England’s belated

decision to launch her own colonizing efforts in the New World, where Spain and

Portugal had long preceded her and where she now found the Netherlands, Sweden, and

France in close competition.....................

Map and Compass Navigation Basics Class

Description: Come learn basic navigation skills using map and compass to find your way. In this in-store class you'll learn the parts of a compass, how to read a topographic map and how to use them in tandem. You'll learn how to pinpoint your location through triangulation and then navigate to new locations by following a bearing. You'll also learn how plan routes using a topographic map. This is a hands-on in-store class with some lecture components. Maps and compasses are provided, but bring your own if you prefer.

Skills you'll learn:

In 2 hours, learn how to use a map and compass in tandem to pinpoint a location. Learn how to interpret topographical maps. Learn the features of a compass. Learn to identify your position and plan routes using only a topographic map. Learn to take bearings and triangulate your position using a compass. This is a "hands-on" experience with some lecture components.

Go on-line to your local REI store events page. (Sacramento is held on 2/12)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps!

Sacramento Downtown Construction Update

http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/61504/Downtown_construction_update



You can view the article from the link above as put together by Michael Zwahlen of Sacramento Press.

Found Cut + Section Corner

 Searching for a chiseled + on a rock in a "rock farm" would be quite a task without the use of GPS.

With the sun at just the right angle, the shadow produces the perfect light needed to find this 1" cut on top of a large moss rock. Located in Sutter County's grazing land outside the valley of the Sutter Buttes as the Buttes can be seen in this image to the right. Mr. Moore steady-eddys her up and hopes for signal. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!