Klaus Otto Snyder

I hired Klaus to redo the Road Maintenance Agreement on our 5 acre parcel which our home is on. Klaus was requested to basically incorporate the two new lots from the short plat into the RMA giving my home easement crossing over the two new lots we created in the short plat. I had the legal descrip...tions from the Surveyor and only needed them to be added into the RMA. A cost and timeframe was given to me after the consultation meeting, but after 3 months I had nothing, phone calls ignored and I was put on "ignore". His lack of timeliness held up my short plot approval with the City and I ended up retrieving my documents from his law firm and typed them all myself but of course I got a bill from Snyder of $600 plus for nothing.

We hired Mr. Snyder to obtain an easement for property that we purchased. Mr. Snyder estimated it would cost approximately $8000.00 to obtain the easement. Mr. Snyder decided to file a lawsuit to resend the purchase, thus forcing the sellers, the seller’s realtor and broker, our realtor and broker to... obtain the easement. Instead, all of the defendants filed a counter suit. Mr. Snyder neglected to advise us before filing the suit, that we could be liable for counter claims filed by the defendants, thus leaving us liable for 5 defendant’s attorney fees. The defendants filed for a summary judgment and Mr. Snyder lost the case. We were very lucky that we only ended up being responsible for seller’s attorney fees over $18,000.00. Mr. Snyder’s fees exceeded $27,000.00 and we still did not have an easement to our property. Mr. Snyder had a surveyor research 3 roads listed on a deed showing there was no legal access to the property. This cost $1100.00 to find out that the surveyor could not find the three roads listed. This deed was for a proposed highway that was going to be located on the opposite side of our property. The proposed highway was scrapped by the state of Washington and never built. No wonder the surveyor could not find these three roads, they never existed. We found a Real Estate consultant who agreed to look at our paper work to see if an easement would be obtainable for our property. After reviewing our paperwork, the Consultant found that the title company did not transfer the true legal description for our property. The Escrow Company forged our signatures on the tax affidavit. The consultant had the titles true legal description corrected showing that we did own the property under the railroad easement and highway. He had the seller’s attorney file a quick claim deed along with a corrected tax affidavit for the property. Our consultant then contacted Tacoma Rail and the person in charge of the Railroad Right of way to obtain a crossing permit application. Our consultant received verbal approval from the Tacoma Rail for the easement until the crossing application completed and was returned to Tacoma Rail. We completed the application and it is currently at Tacoma Rail for approval. The consultant's charges to date are under $2000.00.