## Facts

- Archie V. McGhee and Evelyn McGhee owned Lot 2, and Evelyn Young owned the adjoining Lot 1, in the Rustic Hills residential subdivision in Martin County, Florida.
- A fence ran between the properties, approximately equidistant from the parties’ houses, along a line marked on the ground by substantial concrete monuments.
- The McGhees sued Young for ejectment, claiming the true boundary followed metes-and-bounds descriptions contained in the parties’ deeds and shown on a subdivision plat.
- Under the McGhees’ asserted deed/plat line, the boundary would have run through Young’s house, garage, and septic tank drain field.
- The deeds contained metes-and-bounds descriptions that correlated to the Rustic Hills survey/plat; the plat was recorded after several subdivision lots (including Lots 1 and 2) had already been conveyed.
- The key factual dispute at trial was the location and significance of the original concrete monuments placed in the ground during the subdivision’s original survey.
- Young presented evidence the trial court found persuasive that the original surveyor placed the concrete monuments to mark the boundary between the subdivision lots and that the fence line corresponded to those monuments.
- Relying on the reasoning of *Tyson v. Edwards*, 433 So. 2d 549 (Fla. 5th DCA), review denied, 441 So. 2d 633 (Fla. 1983), the trial court determined the legal boundary was the monument/fence line, not the conflicting deed/plat line, and entered judgment for Young.
- The McGhees appealed to the Fourth District Court of Appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court’s finding about the location of the original concrete monuments was supported by substantial competent evidence.
2. When original survey monuments on the ground conflict with deed metes-and-bounds descriptions and a later-recorded subdivision plat, whether the monuments control the location of the boundary between adjoining lots.

## Decision

- The Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment for Young.
- The court held there was substantial competent evidence supporting the trial court’s factual finding that the monuments were located along the line that became the fence line between Lot 1 and Lot 2.
- The court agreed with the trial court’s use of *Tyson v. Edwards* and held that the boundary established by the original survey monuments controlled over inconsistent metes-and-bounds descriptions and the subsequently recorded plat.

## Legal Principles

- A trial court’s resolution of conflicting evidence about the location of boundary monuments will be upheld on appeal if supported by substantial competent evidence.
- In a boundary dispute, properly identified monuments set by the original surveyor generally control over conflicting written calls such as courses, distances, and metes-and-bounds descriptions.
- A recorded plat (including one recorded after some lot conveyances) does not displace the boundary shown by reliably located original monuments when the plat and written descriptions conflict with those monuments.
- Where the evidence shows the original surveyor monumented the subdivision lot line, that monumented line may be treated as the controlling boundary even if applying the deed/plat line would place substantial portions of a structure over the line.

## Conclusion

*McGhee v. Young* affirmed a final judgment rejecting the McGhees’ ejectment claim and fixing the boundary between adjoining subdivision lots at the line marked by the original concrete monuments (which matched an existing fence), holding that the monuments controlled over conflicting deed metes-and-bounds descriptions and a later-recorded plat, and that the trial court’s monument-location finding stood because it was supported by substantial competent evidence.


McGhee v. Young, 606 So. 2d 1215 (1992), review denied, 620 So. 2d 761 (1993)