At first glance, it may seem that for a land surveying forensic examination, it is sufficient to provide a plan or the coordinates of the boundary turning points of a land plot.
However, in practice, it is precisely an incomplete set of documentation that often leads to incorrect conclusions.
A case from my own practice clearly demonstrates this.
Now, please read the following carefully and look closely at the illustration:
- Yellow – the boundaries of the land plot according to the land management documentation.
- Green – the actual location of the boundaries.
If only the coordinates of the external boundaries are compared, one might conclude that there is a discrepancy between the actual use of the land plot and the land management documentation.
And that could have been the end of the analysis. However, a forensic expert does not draw conclusions based on a single piece of information. If you look at the house located on this land plot, an interesting pattern becomes apparent: it is also shifted by almost the same distance and in the same direction.
And this is extremely important. If the land management documentation contains the coordinate catalogue of the building's outline, the expert can compare those coordinates with the building's actual location. It then becomes obvious that not only the land plot boundaries but also the building itself have shifted simultaneously. Since a house cannot physically "move" several meters together with a fence, what does this indicate? Most likely, the reason lies in:
- an error in determining the coordinates;
- incorrect coordinate transformation;
- a technical error made during the preparation of the land management documentation, etc.
In other words, the issue may not be an actual boundary violation but rather errors in the documentation. That is why providing only the coordinates of the land plot boundary turning points is not sufficient for a forensic expert. For a complete and objective examination, it is often necessary to provide the entire set of land management documentation (including the coordinates of building outlines), as well as the legal title documents and technical documentation for the buildings. Only a comprehensive analysis of all the available materials makes it possible not merely to identify that the coordinates "do not match," but to determine whether a boundary violation has actually occurred and what the true cause of the discrepancy is. This often plays a decisive role in the proper resolution of a land dispute.
