Court Opinion

ID: 9307632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:18:23.519428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:59.167163
License: Public Domain

BROWN, District Judge
(concurring). I concur in the .above findings and rulings, and state certain reasons which have led to the conclusion that the methods of the measurement of the Gile line are such as would deprive the Glen Manufacturing Company of a substantial amount of the land to which under its deed it is entitled. The problem of the surveyor is to measure a line upwards of nine miles in length, through rough and mountainous country, by successive applications of a measuring instrument. A part of the process necessarily involves personal skill and judgment, since the complete operation of measurement includes an observer as well as measuring instruments. Observation must determine at each application of the .instrument whether the application is correctly made, whether it is upon the true course, whether there is a departure in any direction from the true theoretical line. Whatever the instruments employed, however scientific the processes, they merely reduce, but do not eliminate, the elements of personal judgment and personal error. The importance of error is to be determined by the practical purpose in hand. At times it may be disregarded, at times compensation should be made for it. It seems to me that upon the evidence in this case there appears the necessity for some ¿llowance or compensation for error in order to reach a result even practically correct. The evidence for the Glen Manufacturing Company is to the effect that in measuring wild lands by a chain or tape error always results, and that the error is invariably one way. Given two points at a considerable distance from each other, a line measured between them will always be longer than the true theoretical line. Errors of measurement consume distance, and the surveyor of an uneven surface covers with his measure a greater distance than the true line: If the sum of his successive measurements is relied upon to give the required length, his terminal will be located at a point on the ground at a less actual distance from the starting point than the correct terminal point. This is obviously so. As a straight line is sought, and as this is the shortest possible distance between two points, no irregularity in the contour of the surface over which the line is extended can shorten it. On the contrary, every elevation, every depression must count one way and only one way; i. e. to elongate the measured line over the true line. In a line of over nine miles in length through mountainous and heavily wooded country every obstacle in the true path, every rock, every mountain, every valley contributes error. Every angle of deviation made to avoid an obstacle adds error. To accept the measurement of the Gile line, in which no allowances for error were made, but which is-simply the sum of successive measurements, we are forced to hold that the surveyor who made it had the unerring observation, judgment, and eyesight to keep the tape always upon the true course and true horizontal line. In my opinion it is not satisfactorily proved *254that the Gile line was run upon a more accurate or more scientific method than the older lines, which his measurements increase in length from 6% to 10 per cent., thereby augmenting the land area about 17 per cent. The method lacked what is known as a correction for the personal error of the observer; what in measuring wild lands-may be said to be a lack of correction of the personal error under conditions which make error inevitable. The evidence as to the Gile line discloses a confident assumption of accuracy under conditions which do not permit of it. In one respect, at least, the older lines seem to me more scientific than the Gile line, namely, in a recognition of the existence of error, and in an attempt to rectify it. One of the witnesses in favor of the Gile line ventured the opinion that deviations in the surface tend to balance each other. This is clearly not so. As we have seen, the current of error is all in one direction, and there is no tendency towards a correction. On the other hand, it may well be true that where allowances are made by men of experience, errors of judgment can hardly be all one way, and that in a long series of judgments there will be an average of practical accuracy. Without passing, however, upon the accuracy of the older surveys,. since under the findings it is unnecessary to do so, I concur in the findings that the Gile line is not located according to the calls of the deed, and is based upon an imperfect method of measurement.