Opinion ID: 2763910
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Boundary Declaration

Text: [¶8] Hanscom contends that the court erred in accepting Marchese’s survey and its conclusions as to her property’s boundaries. The court’s determination of the location of property boundaries on the face of the earth is a question of fact, which we review for clear error. Matteson v. Batchelder, 2011 ME 134, ¶¶ 12, 16, 32 A.3d 1059. A factual finding is clearly erroneous only if no competent 4 The court’s initial February 6, 2014, decision retained jurisdiction over the matter for twenty days to allow counsel the opportunity to suggest revisions that would provide clearer descriptions of the boundaries of the properties involved. On April 7, 2014, the court issued an amended decision, which retained the same findings but noted that the Marchese survey had been recorded in the Southern Aroostook Registry of Deeds. 5 Per the court’s February 6 decision, appellate time periods were not to commence until after expiration of the twenty-day period on February 26, 2014. Hanscom filed her notice of appeal on February 27, 2014. On April 7, 2014, following a conference with the parties, the Superior Court issued an amended decision as its final judgment. Hanscom thus appeals from the court’s amended decision. See M.R. App. P. 2(b)(1). 6 evidence supports it. Tremblay v. DiCicco, 628 A.2d 141, 143 (Me. 1993). In making a boundary determination, the weight to be given to a surveyor’s opinion is the prerogative of the court as fact-finder. Dupuis v. Soucy, 2011 ME 2, ¶ 20, 11 A.3d 318; McGrath v. Hills, 662 A.2d 215, 218 (Me. 1995). Boundaries are controlled, in descending priority, by monuments, courses, distances, and quantity, unless this priority produces results that are absurd or wholly inconsistent with the grantor’s intent. See Wells v. Powers, 2005 ME 62, ¶ 3, 873 A.2d 361; McGrath, 662 A.2d at 218. An adjoining boundary line is a controlling monument, and thus has “priority over courses and distances or quantity descriptions in a deed.” Howe v. Natale, 451 A.2d 1198, 1202 (Me. 1982). In fixing property boundaries where a deed description contains a latent ambiguity—that is, an ambiguity that becomes apparent when the deed’s otherwise unambiguous description is applied to the ground—the court must determine the grantor’s intent in light of the above rules of construction. Tremblay, 628 A.2d at 143. [¶9] In McGrath, for example, we held that the court’s boundary determination that was based on a surveyor’s testimony was not clearly erroneous, even though the survey “disregarded the starting point of the description in the . . . deed” and raised questions about the dimensions of adjoining properties. 662 A.2d at 218. We reasoned that there was competent evidence for the court to find that the surveyor’s explanation was “the most complete and reasonable” where 7 it reconciled ambiguities and prioritized a call to abut an adjoining property over a call to a specific distance. Id. [¶10] Here, the court accepted Marchese’s survey as the more complete and reasonable explanation of the disputed properties’ boundaries, and there was competent evidence to support the court’s determination. The Marchese survey reconciled ambiguities in the deed to Hanscom, which called for an eastern border along the eastern line of the Decker Lot and a western border that was both parallel to the eastern line and “bearing south 25 degrees west.” The Marchese survey also properly regarded the calls to borders as superior to those of distance or degree. Finally, and significantly, the Marchese survey gives effect to the likely intent of the Haney Lot conveyance, which is stated in the deed itself. As the court opined, “[i]t seems highly unlikely . . . that the grantor would have intended to convey a parallelogram shaped piece of land while retaining a remaining triangular piece with shore frontage so limited that one would be hard pressed to enter the lake for a swim without trespassing.” See also Proctor v. Hinkley, 462 A.2d 465, 472 (Me. 1983) (concluding that a boundary line leaving little or no lake frontage was absurd and inconsistent with other provisions in a deed description). The Marchese survey was thus sound in both law and fact, and the court was free to accept its findings. 8