Brister, 122606 MSAGO, AGO 2006-163

• Court: Mississippi

Rosemary Brister AGO 2006-163 No. 2006-00163 Mississippi Attorney General Opinions 2006          Rosemary Brister          Executive Director          Mississippi Board for Licensure for Professional Engineers & Surveyors          P. O. Box 3          Jackson, Mississippi 39205          Re: Practice of Surveying                    Dear Ms. Brister:          Attorney General Jim Hood has received your opinion request, and has assigned it to me for research and reply. After referencing relevant portions of the laws on professional surveyors, your letter states in pertinent part as follows:

Our request for an Attorney General's Opinion concerns the applicability of [the laws regarding professional land surveyors] to "coordination services" companies. These companies have clients who are often national or multi-state companies in need of ALTA surveys in order to purchase property or secure a loan for a property purchase; however, these clients may also be individual property owners. These "coordination services" companies contract for surveying services with their clients and then hire [licensed] Mississippi professional surveyors to perform the surveying work. The end product is typically a survey plat bearing the title block of the "coordination service" company and the name, signature and seal of the Mississippi Professional Surveyor.

         You then ask whether the following three activities being performed by these "coordination services" constitute the unlawful practice of surveying: (1) the "soliciting of surveying work" without possessing a surveyor's certificate of authority; (2) the "procuring or offering to procure surveying work" without possessing a surveyor's certificate of authority; and (3) the "affixing of the title block and logo" of the unlicensed company to the final survey plat.          In subsequent telephone conversations, you clarified that these "coordination services" (hereinafter unlicensed companies) which are not licensed as surveyors in Mississippi, approach clients and solicit survey jobs from them. They in turn hire a Mississippi-licensed surveyor to perform and prepare the survey, which is then presented to the unlicensed company. You stated that the unlicensed company then essentially "sells" the survey to the client, under their own firm name. You stated that the unlicensed company affixes their own "title block" - the firm name and other information, similar to a letterhead - on the survey plat, along with the...