[OSGeo-Discuss] checking closure of legal descriptions

[Pierre Abbat]

I'm surveying a lot and had to check the legal description against what I 
found on the ground to find if a certain iron was right (it wasn't). The legal 
description doesn't close, so I tried to find the surveyor who drew the map 
that the legal description was drawn from. I searched the web for his name and 
contacted the company I found. A few days later, I got a response that all his 
maps are at another company, and I should contact either of two surveyors, 
both of whom I know, to get the map. A few more days later, one of these 
surveyors emailed me the map.

I have to search the chain of title back to when that map was drawn. So I 
searched the local GIS and downloaded deeds. The oldest one has six errors in 
it: "at" is misspelled "a1", "et ux" (and wife) is misspelled "el ux", the lot 
is between two streets originally named Delta and Della one of which is 
misspelled "Delia", "north" is misspelled "worth", and two short segments were 
left out of lines in different directions. Subsequent lawyers corrected the 
typos and misused the word "sic" in correcting "Delia", but none of them 
checked the closure and corrected the two segments.

I think that a tool that could take a pasted legal description, parse it, draw 
it, and check for closure would be useful to lawyers. What do you think? Does 
it fall within the scope of OSGeo?

Pierre
-- 
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