O.C.G.A.
O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 43-15-22 (2019)

Registrant or licensee required to obtain seal; inscription; purpose; fraudulent use of seal

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Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.
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(a) Every professional engineer and professional land surveyor registered or licensed, as applicable, under this chapter shall, upon receipt of a certificate of registration or license, obtain a seal of the design authorized by the board, bearing the registrant’s or licensee’s name, certificate or license number, and the legend “Professional Engineer,” “Registered Professional Structural Engineer,” or “Professional Land Surveyor,” in accordance with the certificate of registration or license.

(b) Plans, specifications, plats, and reports issued by a registrant or licensee shall be stamped or sealed and countersigned by the registrant or licensee; but it shall be unlawful for the registrant or licensee or any other person to stamp or seal any document with such seal after the certificate of the registrant or license of the licensee named thereon has expired, or has been revoked, or during the period of any suspension imposed by the board. No plans, specifications, plats, or reports shall be stamped with the seal of a registrant or a licensee unless such registrant or licensee has personally performed the engineering or land surveying work involved or, when the registrant or licensee has not personally performed the engineering or land surveying work reflected in any plan, specification, plat, or report, such registrant or licensee has affixed his or her seal thereto only if such document has been prepared by an employee or employees under the registrant’s or licensee’s direct supervisory control on a daily basis and after the registrant or licensee has thoroughly reviewed the work embodied in such document and has satisfied himself or herself completely that such work is adequate.

(c) No registrant or licensee shall affix his or her seal to any plan, specification, plat, or report unless he or she has assumed the responsibility for the accuracy and adequacy of the work involved.

(d) Any registrant or licensee who has affixed his or her seal to any plan, specification, plat, or report prepared by another individual not under the registrant’s or licensee’s direct supervisory control on a daily basis, and without having thoroughly reviewed such work, shall be deemed to have committed a fraudulent act of misconduct in the practice of professional engineering or land surveying.

History

Ga. L. 1937, p. 294, § 16; Ga. L. 1945, p. 294, § 26; Ga. L. 1972, p. 222, § 8; Code 1933, § 84-2121, enacted by Ga. L. 1975, p. 1048, § 1; Ga. L. 1992, p. 3297, § 5; Ga. L. 2018, p. 583, § 1/SB 425; Ga. L. 2020, p. 642, § 8/SB 310.

The 2020 amendment, effective January 1, 2021, inserted “‘Registered Professional Structural Engineer,’ ” near the end of subsection (a).

Annotations

The 2018 amendment, effective July 1, 2018, inserted "or licensee" throughout this Code section; substituted the present provisions of subsection (a) for the former provisions, which read: "Every engineer and land surveyor registered under this chapter shall, upon receipt of a certificate of registration, obtain a seal of the design authorized by the board, bearing the registrant's name, certificate number, and the legend 'Registered Professional Engineer,' or 'Registered Land Surveyor,' in accordance with the certificate of registration."; in subsection (b), inserted "or license of the licensee" in the middle of the first sentence and inserted "or a licensee" near the beginning of the second sentence; inserted "or licensee's" in the middle of subsections (b) and (d); in the middle of subsection (c), inserted "or her" and inserted "or she"; and substituted "individual" for "person" in the middle of subsection (d).

Law reviews. - For article surveying real property, see 34 Mercer L. Rev. 255 (1982).

JUDICIAL DECISIONS

Liability of surveyor. - Surveyor is responsible to the public for the accuracy of the surveying work reflected therein, and the surveyor may accordingly be held liable to purchasers damaged by reasonable reliance upon the plat. Hutchinson v. Dubeau, 161 Ga. App. 65, 289 S.E.2d 4 (1982).

Plat not a "sealed instrument". - Plat signed by the surveyor with a seal attached did not qualify as an "instrument under seal" governed by the 20-year statute of limitation. Landmark Eng'g, Inc. v. Cooper, 222 Ga. App. 752, 476 S.E.2d 63 (1996).

RESEARCH REFERENCES

C.J.S. - 78A C.J.S., Seals, § 2.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 2 cases, 1996–2010 · leading case: Haygood v. Head, 699 S.E.2d 588 (Ga. Ct. App. 2010).
Sort: Relevance Newest Treatment
Haygood v. Head, 699 S.E.2d 588 (Ga. Ct. App. 2010). · cites it 2× “While Head and Larry Rogers may have been obligated to exercise due care in surveying the property now owned by Tilley (see OCGA § 43-15-22 (c)), neither Head nor Larry Rogers claims an interest in use or ownership of the easement or Tilley’s property.”
Landmark Eng'g, Inc. v. Cooper, 476 S.E.2d 63 (Ga. Ct. App. 1996). · cites it 2× “OCGA § 43-15-22 requires each registered surveyor to affix this stamp, which contains his name and registration number, to every plat, specification, plan, or report he produces.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.