Court Opinion

ID: 9831936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:29:25.65057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:39.606521
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The contention is made on rehearing that since we hold the 1859 survey to be a legal one, it should now be followed. We only hold the survey legal with respect to the question discussed, but we further hold that the line described by the field notes of the 1859 survey was never actually recognized by either county and was never marked upon the ground as required by law.
 The contention is also made that the filing and approval by the respective commissioners’ courts of the reports and field notes of the surveyors appointed constituted a judicial determination and establishment of the boundary line here involved, which neither county could annul nor destroy by merely failing to recognize it for a long period of years. The contention is without merit. One of the primary purposes of the statutes with regard to county boundary line surveys is to provide for surveying and actually marking of such a line upon the ground in order that all concerned may see it and be informed of their respective rights in the premises. Nothing short of a substantial marking upon the ground as provided by statute will suffice to establish a county boundary line. The most that can be said for the' surveys of 1859 and 1883 is that field notes were made and approved which described certain natural objects with courses and distance calls from which a line might be established on the ground. Those field notes and surveys do not show that the line was actually marked and identified on the ground. The proof is to the contrary. There is no showing whatever that survey lines were marked at the point -where the county line was supposed to have crossed them so that landowners might know their rights. And the mere formal adoption or approval by the commissioners’ courts of the survey- or’s, reports and field notes will not suffice, because another survey in accordance with the field notes so approved is necessary to actually mark and establish the line upon the ground. Each county is here insisting that at least a portion of the line is indefinite and unmarked, and each is asking a survey with legal markings upon the ground. The only way to now establish the line is to again survey, either in accordance with the field notes which were never actually recognized though formally adopted, and which would be merely a course and distance survey, or in accordance with the dividing waters of the rivers named and the line fixed by the statutes. Certainly the Legislature did not intend by the various validating acts with regard to “established” county boundary lines to bind a county to á line merely because it had adopted reports and field notes of surveyors appointed to survey it, where the undisputed evidence, shows that no actual markings upon the ground were ever made locating the line. The boundary line the Legislature intended to validate was one actually established and marked upon the ground, and not a line which might be established from course and distance calls of approved field notes of surveyors appointed to survey such line, but which had never been actually marked upon the ground as-required by law, and which had never been actually recognized by the counties. We therefore conclude that the line now to be established and marked should follow the divide between the waters of the rivers named and as provided by the statutes defining said boundary line, which divide constitutes a permanent natural object capable of being readily found and marked upon the ground. In that conclusion we are supported by the case of Pecos v. Brewster County, supra, which is very similar in point of fact to this case. In that case a resurvey was ordered because the surveyor making first one did not build nor erect monuments on the line as required by law, for which reason the line was declared to be an unmarked and unidentified line. Such is the exact situation here presented. Although two surveys of the line have been made, it was not marked upon the ground and the'parties at interest do not know, nor have they ever known, its exact location on the ground according to the undisputed evidence.
The motion will be overruled.
Overruled.