I have asked that question of lawyers many times and I'm usually told something like this:

Someone in their office found that the parties were not the same, or that the lien had been paid but not cancelled of record

The owner and lender had agreed to accept the risk

The new mortgage takes priority over certain prior liens, and the client is only insuring the mortgage, so he's in the clear. Someone elses problem.

The borrower was such a good credit risk no one believed the mortgage would ever go into default so prior liens would never be an issue (on the theory that sleeping dogs rarely wake, and prior liens really only matter if we have to foreclose, which we probably won't)

And my personal favorite: someone somewhere has already insured it, and we can pass any problems onto them

As best I can tell, all of the above have some validity some of the time, and work just fine until they don't, or until the mortgage gets cancelled. However, none of them apply to abstractors. As an abstractor you should forget you ever saw them and keep reporting what you find, same as always. ;-)

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