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...

Like you say, if this was once the standard practice, it apparently isn't anymore, considering that out of at least three lenders who submitted mortgages that morning, none of them learned of the other mortgages until it was too late.

My question is this though-- if the first-to-be indexed document were truly supposed to have priority, why wouldn't they simply timestamp the document with the actual time that they initially processed it and placed in the queue to be indexed, instead of stamping it 8AM?  Wouldn't that remove all confusion as to which document had priority?  It seems to me that this practice of identical timestamps only makes sense if they are intending the documents to have equal priority in the general case.  Since your opinion is that the decision is wrong, what is your explanation for the purpose of the identical timestamps?