Their "expert" testimony is so flawed as to have materially and substantially  mislead the judiciary in this case.  The time between the 7:30-8:00 am submissions and the actual stamping of the documents with time/date/series # is used not only to make the minor corrections mentioned and to clear names on the index, but for every title company representative to check each others' pending transactions to verify proper order and recording priority between firms, otherwise transactions are removed from the que and resubmitted in proper order later in the day.  Her testimony was from the perspective of a civil servant looking across the counter at the technical workings of title companies that were in place for very good reasons long before I started in the 80's. 

Secondly, as I've stated before, the lack of governing law to require indexing in reasonable time does not obviate the obligation of civil servants who are being paid by the taxpayers to execute their duty with diligence and efficiency.  In fact, the 14 days between recording of a Notice of Trustee Sale and the foreclosure auction day imposes a very clear obligation to get this data to the public beforehand in order for the foreclosure process to provide proper public notice of such matters (something that San Francisco County failed to do for years and is now being investigated by the news media as a coming story, so remember you heard it from me on SOT first, years ago).

Thirdly, the distinction between indexing and recording is insane.  To expect the public to magically know that any county records database is not up-to-date, when no signs are posted or notices given online or in house, is silly.  To further expect the public to request their right to examine every yet-to-be-indexed public record in a county like Los Angeles which has record 5000 records in a single day (busy times), is impossible to accommodate from both the administrative side of the Recorders Office and the practical side of putting them in hands of inexperienced members of the public.

I see that, while title companies once shared their name data in the mornings between their employees, that there are few if any actual employee left, and the service firms that replaced them keep such names guarded so as not to release proprietary client data to their clients' competitors, for fear of being sued.  All the more is the loss for the integrity of a system that once worked well, in an age of rising risk and liability.   This overturning decades of good standards and practices by rogue third party service firms desiring to protect their own skin does not mean that they are doing right by their clients in this State.  Underwriters should appeal this ruling based on the longstanding standards of our State, as it is otherwise set to enshrine a new paradigm and a bad one into precedence.