18.3 Expert Testimony, Land Planning, and Conflict Resolution

This section finishes Domain VI professional activities 2, 3, 4, and 6: provide expert witness testimony (depositions, arbitration, trials, litigation support); provide land planning services (tentative maps, Department of Real Estate exhibits); provide recommendations in accordance with State laws (Subdivision Map Act, Professional Land Surveyors’ Act, Public Resources Code); and provide conflict resolution. Knowledge N, O, and Q travel with those activities: survey-relevant CEQA, categorical exemption, and negative declaration; the surveyor’s role in title and boundary conflicts (analysis, mediation, litigation support); and mediation techniques. Independent OpenExamPrep teaching. Not Board-sponsored.

Expert witness testimony (VI.2)

California Evidence Code section 801 limits expert opinion to an opinion that is:

(a) related to a subject sufficiently beyond common experience that the opinion of an expert would assist the trier of fact; and

(b) based on matter (including special knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education) perceived by or personally known to the witness or made known at or before the hearing, whether or not admissible, that is of a type that reasonably may be relied upon by an expert in forming an opinion on that subject, unless the expert is precluded by law from using that matter.

That is the same professional limit 16 CCR 476(c)(7) states in Board language: opinions need a basis in fact, experience, or accepted land surveying principles. A surveyor may opine where the record monuments, occupation, and measurements place a line. A surveyor may explain why a 1924 pipe controls over a recent rebar. A surveyor does not opine who holds fee title, who “should win,” or whether adverse possession has been proven. Those are legal conclusions. Chapter 14 taught the elements of unwritten rights; this chapter is how those elements are spoken under oath.

Sargon Enterprises, Inc. v. University of Southern California (2012) 55 Cal.4th 747 reads Evidence Code 801(b) and 802 as a trial-court gatekeeping duty: exclude expert opinion based on matter of a type on which an expert may not reasonably rely, based on reasons the material does not support, or that is speculative. A boundary opinion that leaps from “there is a fence” to “the fence is the title line because fences always win” is the speculative form. People v. Sanchez (2016) 63 Cal.4th 665 limits an expert’s recitation of case-specific hearsay. You may rely on a title commitment and recorded maps as the kind of matter surveyors use; you still distinguish what you personally measured from what a neighbor told you in the yard. The 2026 ALTA/NSPS plat already requires a notation of parol statements—that is how you document the neighbor’s words without converting them into your own measured fact.

Forums the test plan names:

• Deposition. Testimony under oath before trial. Answer the question asked. “I do not know” is an answer. Guessing a distance you did not inverse is not 801(b) matter.
• Arbitration. A private trier of fact; the same opinion limits apply.
• Trial. Direct, cross, and often a demonstration exhibit. BPC 8761(c) still wants interim exhibits marked preliminary or for examination only until they are issued as final.
• Litigation support. Research, graphics, and consulting for counsel without taking the stand. The work is still land surveying if it locates lines or rights. 476(c)(9) forbids knowingly permitting use of your maps for unlawful purposes.

Worked teaching file: you retraced Lot 12, found original block corners, measured a garage 2.4 feet over the record line, and noted 40 years of occupation. In deposition you may say the garage occupies 2.4 feet of the adjoining record lot as you retraced it, and you may describe the occupation. You may not say “the neighbor has title by adverse possession.” 476(c)(2) also forbids misrepresenting your scope: if you were hired only to measure the garage, do not claim you completed a senior-rights retracement you never performed.

Land planning: tentative maps and DRE exhibits (VI.3)

Chapter 17 owns the legal content of State-regulated maps. Domain VI.3 is the consulting use of those maps in planning and in a Department of Real Estate public-report file.

Government Code section 66424.5(a) defines a tentative map as a map made for the purpose of showing the design and improvement of a proposed subdivision and the existing conditions in and around it. It need not be based upon an accurate or detailed final survey of the property. That sentence is the exam trap. A tentative map is a planning instrument. It still must be prepared by a person authorized to practice land surveying when it is a land-surveying document, and local ordinances add existing topography, easements, and proposed lots. It is not the recorded final map, and it is not a substitute for monumented lot corners.

Government Code section 66452 says a tentative map is filed with the clerk of the advisory agency (or as local ordinance designates). A vesting tentative map is filed and processed as a tentative map except as the Map Act or local ordinance provides, and it shall have printed conspicuously on its face the words “Vesting Tentative Map.”

Government Code section 66426 requires a tentative and final map for subdivisions creating five or more parcels, five or more condominiums, a community apartment project of five or more parcels, or conversion to a stock cooperative of five or more dwelling units, with listed exceptions (small acreage with existing street frontage and no dedications, 20-acre parcels with approved access, certain industrial or commercial tracts as to street geometry, 40-acre or quarter-quarter parcels, and environmental subdivisions under 66418.2). Those excepted divisions still need a parcel map under 66426(f). Chapter 4 taught Map Act triggers at business level; here the recommendation is which planning exhibit to start.

The California Department of Real Estate Subdivision Public Report Application Guide (SPRAG) treats the subdivision map as a public-report exhibit. SPRAG’s definition: a tentative map is a document prepared by a licensed civil engineer or registered land surveyor in accordance with the Subdivision Map Act (Government Code section 66410 et seq.) and examined by local agencies. A final map is the recorded document certifying that tentative-map conditions and certificates have been satisfied. DRE will not issue a preliminary or conditional public report until the local jurisdiction has tentatively approved the project, unless DRE finds that processing delays explain a missing approval that will arrive in a reasonable time. A recorded map (or an already submitted waiver) is required before the final public report. SPRAG review looks at lot numbering, access, dedications, setbacks, unbuildable areas, hazards, rights-of-way, easements that may not appear on the title report, and mineral reservations. Other DRE exhibits a surveyor often prepares or coordinates: plot plan or site plan (improvements, common area, phasing lines) and, for condominiums, a condominium plan that must match the subdivision map and later be recorded with owner and deed-of-trust beneficiary certificates. If the recorded map does not match the title report’s land, SPRAG calls the exhibit unacceptable. That is a surveying quality problem, not a marketing problem.

Knowledge C (local ordinances: zoning, setbacks) belongs on the tentative map and the DRE plot plan. Table A zoning items on an ALTA survey are a different product: they start from a zoning report the client supplies. Do not import a DRE plot-plan amenity into an ALTA certification.

Recommendations under SMA, PLS Act, and PRC, including CEQA (VI.4)

Activity VI.4 is recommendations, not impersonating the lead agency or the county surveyor.

Subdivision Map Act recommendations. Is this a five-or-more-parcel final-map path under 66426, a parcel-map path, a 66428 waiver candidate, or a 66412 exception? Does the tentative map need existing contour source notes because CEQA and the grading ordinance will use them? Chapter 17 will own certificates; you recommend which map type and which existing-conditions exhibit the planner actually needs.

Professional Land Surveyors’ Act recommendations. After the field work, does BPC 8762 require a Record of Survey? Does 8773 require a corner record? Does the ALTA plat still leave a 8762 material discrepancy unfiled? BPC 8759 still wants a written contract before the extra filing. BPC 8761 still wants preliminary sheets labeled as such. Those are recommendations you give the client in writing so 476(e) completeness is honest.

Public Resources Code recommendations. If the map will show State Plane Coordinates, recommend the 8815 / 8815.1 / 8815.5 notes at the start of drafting, not after the county surveyor’s first check. PRC 8814 still says coordinates do not give constructive notice without a tie to recorded data.

CEQA, categorical exemption, and negative declaration appear on the test plan as survey-relevant recommendation topics. This is not a full CEQA course.

The lead agency—usually the city or county processing the discretionary map—makes the CEQA decision. The surveyor supplies exhibits: existing topography, wetland or ordinary-high-water lines as measured, slope, access, and lot yield. Public Resources Code section 21080(b)(1) keeps ministerial projects out of CEQA. A purely ministerial lot-line adjustment or a map waiver, if it is truly ministerial under local law, is a different recommendation from a discretionary tentative map.

CEQA Guidelines section 15354 (14 CCR 15354): a categorical exemption is an exemption from CEQA for a class of projects based on a finding by the Secretary for Resources that the class does not have a significant effect on the environment. Section 15371: a negative declaration is a written statement by the lead agency briefly describing the reasons that a proposed project, not exempt from CEQA, will not have a significant effect on the environment and therefore does not require an EIR. Section 15070 tells the agency to prepare a negative declaration or mitigated negative declaration when the initial study shows no substantial evidence of a significant effect, or when revisions agreed to before public review clearly avoid or mitigate the effects. Section 15071 contents include a brief project description, location (preferably on a map) and proponent name, a proposed finding of no significant effect, and an attached initial study.

Guidelines section 15300.2 exceptions can destroy a categorical exemption: sensitive location (especially Class 3), cumulative impact of successive projects of the same type in the same place, unusual circumstances with a reasonable possibility of a significant effect, scenic highways (damage to scenic resources within an officially designated state scenic highway), hazardous-waste sites on the Government Code 65962.5 list, and historical resources. The surveyor’s recommendation is: this parcel has a slope, a creek, or a mapped habitat the planner should see before someone writes “cat ex” on the staff report. The surveyor does not adopt the exemption.

Conflict resolution (VI.6)

Knowledge O is the surveyor’s role in title and boundary conflicts: analysis, mediation, litigation support. Knowledge Q is mediation techniques. Knowledge M is notice of potential encroachments.

A California conflict file usually contains a record line, occupation, and an encumbrance. The mapping product from section 18.1 already shows the fence, the garage, and the blanket easement that cannot be plotted. Conflict resolution is what you do next without pretending to be the court.

Notice of potential encroachments. Write to the client (and, when the contract and 476(d) allow, to the affected neighbor or to counsel) that improvements occupy a stated width of the adjoining record land as retraced. Do not title the letter “encroachment proven as a matter of law.”

Mediation. Interest-based mediation asks what each party needs (a garage, a driveway width, a lender’s ALTA Table A Item 20 table) rather than who can shout “monument” louder. Techniques that stay inside surveying practice: bring a simple exhibit both sides can read; separate measured facts from legal theories; list options that still need an attorney to finish (exchange deed, license, lot-line adjustment, quiet-title action, title endorsement). Do not draft the deed unless you are preparing a description under Chapter 16 for counsel. Do not agree to “split the difference” on a senior line just to end the meeting; 476(c)(7) still requires accepted land surveying principles.

Clouds on title (Chapter 13) are reasons an insurer excepts. A surveyor can create a practical cloud by labeling occupation as “prescriptive easement” in a recorded exhibit. Show the evidence; let counsel and the insurer decide the exception language.

Unwritten rights, riparian or littoral effects, and earth movement (test-plan knowledge F, G, I, K) re-enter here as recommendations. If occupation supports a possible unwritten right, recommend legal advice and, if a Record of Survey is otherwise required, map the evidence. If a water boundary moved, recommend a new measurement date and the attribute located, not a freehand “old bank” as title. If a landslide shifted occupation relative to record monuments, recommend a monitoring or retracement product that states the epoch of measurement (Chapter 14 analyzed the motion; Chapter 10 measured it).

Worked teaching mediation: Lot A’s record line runs 2.4 feet through Lot B’s garage. You prepare a boundary exhibit, an ALTA-style encroachment table if Table A Item 20 was purchased, and a letter noticing a potential encroachment. In mediation you explain the original block corners you held and the garage ties. You do not sell a “surveyor’s compromise line” as a new title line. You do recommend that if the parties want a relocated line, they will need a conveyance and the correct Map Act path (lot-line adjustment vs. new subdivision). That is conflict resolution as professional consulting, not as a substitute for the Superior Court.