I didn't know Skip, and I know nothing of AccuData or their history, but I am sorry to hear of his passing.  That being said, I would have to disagree with your contention that somehow being stiffed by a national bank for over $600,000 is any excuse for not paying your abstractors.  I hardly think that $600,000 of accounts payable accrued in a short period of time.  It certainly seems like they should have been aware of the problem much sooner and done something about it.  Why on Earth would anyone continue to do work for a company that owed that much money?  And worse... continue to order work from abstractors, who are unaware of the problem, knowing that they could not pay them.  There really is no excuse for that.  

If you can't afford to pay your abstractors, you shouldn't be ordering searches from them.  Many companies got into this business underfunded and when they couldn't pay, they didn't just stiff their abstractors, they continued to run up bills and then said "Sorry, my client didn't pay me... so I can't pay you."  I really don't have any sympathy for them.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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