You pretty much have to know going in that theres going to be a lap screwup in every(or lets realistically say half) of indoor track meets. Usually in the 3200(in HS) but any long race is fair game. So its not really shocking first of all.
As a masters runner you should def be more bossy/informed and realize that you know a lot more about what is going on in your race than the officials. Its not like you are a high school freshman. I mean clearly shit happens and it sucks for this poor team but if my laps got miscounted in a race(or lets say if i ran the wrong number of laps) i would blame myself because its my job to know that. I certainly would expect myself to know more than the officials especially in a 3k or 5k.
Having said that it sounds like the officials at this meet were acting like jerks for some/a lot of the time.
It reminds me of a meet at PG this winter in the 3200. They screwed the laps up with about 4-5 to go(which is invariably when it happens). The guy forgot to turn the lap counter so was telling people one lap too many. It took me about 2 laps to figure that out because i was on the turn behind the lap counter so with (the real)two to go we were yelling to our guy(who was in 5th place) the correct amount. With the real one to go we yell to him obv and then i ran to the lap counter and told him several times they are finishing now and two other people were yelling from the stands. Too late of course- so the guy is ringing the bell when they are supposed to be done.
The point is that our guy knew how many he had left(he knew anyway and we were telling him) so when he had finished 16 laps he stopped. Of course the real accomplishment is that he initially got disqualified for running the correct number of laps but then we went back and straightened it out on the camera(since they had to correct the first 4 runners times anyway)
The main point is dont assume the officials are going to do a good job and dont let yourself get screwed. Im sorry to say but i would certainly expect a masters runner to know that he had only run 3 laps rather than 4. Its very simple- dont hand off and tell them to get out of the way. It is understandable that that didnt happen but I still feel like it should have.