Corner crossing SCOTUS appeal

what's your point?

all i'm saying is that i see a higher liability in crossing private land cause you missed the pin than doing your best when no pin is present. i'm gonna put a bit of effort into making sure i don't overlook pins.

i'm not gonna take the time to report missing pins, especially because how am i supposed to know one was ever present? if there is a like 2 inch diameter hole in the ground where it seems one should be maybe i'll let the local BLM office or GW know. i dunno. i don't really care.
If you report that there is no pin they would know if one was ever supposed to be there or not. If it is missing they might remind one or both landowners not to mess with it again, since who else would have a reason to pull it.
 
The burden of proof is on a prosecutor to prove that you are guilty to 12 people. If theres not defined corner, how could you plausibly know where to cross and not trespass?
How do they prove exactly where I was.... innocent until proven guilty. I have a gps that show's I'm crossing at the corner with no intent on trespassing, what do they have? The landowner's calibrated memory of a property line that isn't physically marked and where I was standing? Fat chance...
 
What makes me shake my head in all this is that his real case is against the real estate industry. They continue to sell the idea the buyer "controls" the checkerboard. This id fraud and should be prosecuted. Nothing like buying something the agent has no right to sell.
Smart buyers know the reality - as for dumb buyers, well, ignorance is no excuse.
 
Out west, is it common that most/all corner posts are exposed? Around here most are set in the ground 6-24" to the top of the marker
 
How do they prove exactly where I was.... innocent until proven guilty. I have a gps that show's I'm crossing at the corner with no intent on trespassing, what do they have? The landowner's calibrated memory of a property line that isn't physically marked and where I was standing? Fat chance...
All im going to say is for the sake of yourself and anyone else wanting access in the corners - be sure of what youre doing.

Ask your (a) lawyer.....
 
How do they prove exactly where I was.... innocent until proven guilty. I have a gps that show's I'm crossing at the corner with no intent on trespassing, what do they have? The landowner's calibrated memory of a property line that isn't physically marked and where I was standing? Fat chance...
I suppose the argument would go . . . with accuracy of only +/- 12 feet you are statistically much more likely to have stepped on private than not. One of these days congress needs to fix this one way or the other for federal checkerboard, and the states for state.
 
How do they prove exactly where I was.... innocent until proven guilty. I have a gps that show's I'm crossing at the corner with no intent on trespassing, what do they have? The landowner's calibrated memory of a property line that isn't physically marked and where I was standing? Fat chance...
I have had lots of properties surveyed and many times the onx corner or property line in the field is not where the gps overlay shows it. No connection with gps accuracy either. I would be thinking landowners might know this also at various obvious locations.
 
I have had lots of properties surveyed and many times the onx corner or property line in the field is not where the gps overlay shows it. No connection with gps accuracy either. I would be thinking landowners might know this also at various obvious locations.
My personal experience confirms this. We have a number of different parcel acquired overtime in MN - each purchase required a survey confirmation - if I used ONX to cross my own corners I would miss every time - sometimes by a few feet and sometimes by 25+. And the county's satellite parcel maps that they make available on the web are even worse.
 
I suppose the argument would go . . . with accuracy of only +/- 12 feet you are statistically much more likely to have stepped on private than not. One of these days congress needs to fix this one way or the other for federal checkerboard, and the states for state.

i'm all for beating the overthinking horse to death so let's get after it.

so, how do you rectify that potential/hypothetical argument with the federal ruling and the appeals ruling? so by virtue of ambiguity on property line locations and therefore corners absent pins we are effectively relocked out of all the land? UIA be damned and recent ruling be damned?

even with the statistical probability argument it would seem that there is still the probability you did cross properly and they can't say that you didn't?

🤷‍♂️
 
My personal experience confirms this. We have a number of different parcel acquired overtime in MN - each purchase required a survey confirmation - if I used ONX to cross my own corners I would miss every time - sometimes by a few feet and sometimes by 25+. And the county's satellite parcel maps that they make available on the web are even worse.
My property, these two survey markers are off by roughly 35'.

1752166450676.png
 
but how do you rectify that argument with the federal ruling and the appeals ruling? so by virtue of ambiguity on property line locations and therefore corners absent pins we are effectively relocked out of all the land? UIA be damned?
Separate discussion. I was responding to the "they can't prove it" argument.

For your question, the courts would have to decide how "literal" or "equitable" they wanted to play this and one could make reasonable arguments either way.
 
I have had lots of properties surveyed and many times the onx corner or property line in the field is not where the gps overlay shows it. No connection with gps accuracy either. I would be thinking landowners might know this also at various obvious locations.
That’s because onx just uses what the county provides. Not every GIS data base is submitted with same datum or sometimes other factors. Reason your phone might show your not standing on a known corner is coupled with data may be submitted in different format and pair that with your phone which is a resource grade gps. So your starting at maybe 10-15’ accuracy coupled with potential issues with data.
 
The Townsend, MT area case that was dropped comes to mind. Didn't they have trail cam pics near the corner?

A paranoid LO could set up cams at particular corners to prove something.
 
I’m currently working on a boundary across 6 sections that haven’t been surveyed since the GLO in 1886

I’ve found about 40% of the stones. We are finding that this particular GLO surveyor did not follow the procedure for township layout. His stuff is all over the place

Sometimes the corners look like this.

Some I only found after deviating drastically from lines of occupation and realizing that he was running his lines backwards or traversing around rough ground and not running the lines at all and faking his terrain calls.


IMG_5768.jpegIMG_5769.jpegIMG_5779.jpegIMG_5621.jpeg
 
Just imagine how you would feel if your neighbors onx showed the neighbors boundary was 35 feet in your yard and the neighbor started parking their car on what the neighbor believed to be their property because of onx. Even though there is a pin or marker somewhere that the neighbor can't see because of brush or higher grass.
 
Just imagine how you would feel if your neighbors onx showed the neighbors boundary was 35 feet in your yard and the neighbor started parking their car on what the neighbor believed to be their property because of onx. Even though there is a pin or marker somewhere that the neighbor can't see because of brush or higher grass.
look at my example. That's a driveway on my property that onX states is not mine.
 
Separate discussion. I was responding to the "they can't prove it" argument.
Haven't proved anything... you say probability, which is not certainty. Unless there is a physical corner, with a documented survey on how that corner is set, the basis of which it's set, everyone is just assuming its where it is and guessing whether I actually stepped on private or not. Short of the landowner standing next to me with a surveyor, or physically proving EXACTLY where I was standing and then having it legally surveyed, Pretty good odds that is a reasonable doubt.

But really, if you don't have the balls to step over the corner, you might as well just stay on the other side.. :unsure: Growing up in a Surveyor's household, I was slipping through sliver's of public land 20 years before OnX was even a thing, and now I've got zero problem crossing a corner in the states of 10th circuit until ruled otherwise. On a sidenote, I've seen plenty of survey markers set by PLS's that were completely off too...

A bunch of the section corners in the West are piles of stones, or marked flagstone, some buried. Also many of the survey grids are based off different meridians, and there are even adjustments to sections made due to surveying errors made over a century ago. There are always boundary discrepancies. You could have 5 different surveyor's legally set your property corners and some might be a little different than the others, the margin of error less on smaller parcel's of land. Many of the early surveys were measured with rods and links, steel chains, then laser distance meter's and now GPS. Also survey instruments now have a tighter tolerance on angles. The earlier tools being much less accurate... Clear as MUD right?
 
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