Tag Archives: legal

Surveyors and Appellate Court Opinions

Why should we care about appellate court opinions? I have had this question posed to me on numerous occasions. I suppose it has its roots in the old surveyor’s saw: “We don’t need to read court decisions, because you can never know what the judge is going to do.” While this may have a grain...

Legal Boundaries: The Ultimate Issue

What is the “Ultimate Issue Rule” in civil litigation? The Ultimate Issue Rule refers to Rule 704 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. The Federal Rules of Evidence (the Rules) were submitted to Congress by the Supreme Court in 1973, approved and enacted in 1975. They were intended to bring uniformity across all federal courts...

Policing the Profession

In my last column we touched on the idea of “unchecked incompetent practice” and how that is a problem for the land surveying profession. This time around we are going to dive a little deeper with that idea. In a 1969 article entitle “The Professional Status of Land Surveyors,” Curtis Brown wrote, “professional liability is...

xyHt Magazine Digital Edition: December 2021

Like a good surveyor, xyHt‘s December issue covers a lot of ground. This month we bring you stories about surveying, lidar, legal issues and an in-depth look at the emerging post-processing kinematic technology. As always, if you don’t have a subscription to our print edition, or if someone else in the office has snaffled your copy,...

Incompetence V. Negligence

Do incompetence and negligence mean the same thing? If you check standard references on torts, it seems that while negligence is a stand-alone tort (a civil wrong), incompetence is not. Incompetence is sometimes referred to as an element of the tort of negligence and incompetents are sometimes put away for their own good and the...