§ 16.011.Surveyors

Ten years from the date the survey is completed, for damages arising from an error in a survey by a registered public surveyor or licensed state land surveyor.

Subsection (c) is unusually direct. It states that the section is a statute of repose and is independent of any other limitations period. Most repose statutes leave that to be worked out; this one says it. The effect is that the ten years runs regardless of when a boundary error is discovered or when it causes harm.

The difference between repose and limitations matters here. A limitations period runs from an injury or its discovery and can be tolled. A repose period runs from the defendant’s own act — completing the survey — and extinguishes the claim whether or not anyone has yet been hurt.

Survey errors are exactly the kind of latent defect that argument was written for. A misplaced boundary can sit undetected for a generation until someone builds a fence, and without repose a surveyor would carry that exposure indefinitely.

Presenting a written claim to the surveyor during the ten years extends the period by two years from the date the claim is presented. That is the section’s only extension, and it requires the claim to be in writing and delivered inside the window.

The section reaches licensed surveyors specifically. An error by someone who is neither a registered public surveyor nor a licensed state land surveyor falls outside it and takes the ordinary periods.

Subsection (a)(2) contains a transitional rule for surveys completed before September 1, 1989, giving the later of September 1, 1991 or ten years from completion. It is now spent, but it explains the section’s structure.

Compare the ten-year repose provisions for architects and engineers and for construction contractors, which use the same period measured from substantial completion of an improvement.