S. E. Downey Registered Land Surveyor Case Summary

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The case comes from the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. The parties involved were David and Katherine Graves and S.E. Downey Registered Land Surveyor, P.A. S.E. Downey is owned by Stephen Downey, a registered land surveyor and shareholder of the company. His son, Patrick, is an employee who helped on the Graves’ home project, under the supervision of his father. There are many errors that can occur when surveying a piece of land. When calculating measurements, it is very unlikely that any two measurements will ever be the same. There will most likely always be a degree of variance no matter how many different methods and types of equipment are used. In order to reduce the variance, the discrepancies need to be reduced in order to be as accurate …show more content…

S.E. Downey Registered Land Surveyor, P.A case, a surveying error was made by Patrick Downey where he measured too far into the Acadia National Park’s property line and as a result a $110,589 impact cost was charged to the Graves’ to move the construction of the home. The Graves family property is surrounded by the Acadia National Park on the North and East side. Their intentions were to divide their property into three lots and construct a house on the northern most part of the property. The contractor on the job recommended to use S.E. Downey to survey the land. The construction would include to install a septic system, drill a well, improve an existing road and provide power to the new home. Once construction had started on the Graves family property, a representative from the National Park Service informed the Graves family that the home was intruding into another property that the Acadia National Park had authority to prohibit construction in. As a result, the National Park Service informed the Graves’ that the potential home was north of their property line and needed to be relocated …show more content…

Downey did in fact falsely place the home on a piece of property that the Graves’ did not own. Their actions were a result of the Graves’ $110,589 damages. The Graves’ were given a full compensation of their damages plus interest and costs. After this conclusion was made, S.E. Downey appealed the decision and claimed there was not enough evidence to prove that the damages originated from negligence. They claimed that the Graves family did not provide enough information based on their property boundaries. S.E. Downey stated that the Graves’ failed to provide further information on the owners of their surrounding neighbors’ properties. They continued to exclaim that they were unaware that the Park owned the property where the home intruded on, and blamed the Graves’ for not providing them with the documents that the Park had authority to not allow construction on that piece of

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