Hi, Austin!

Three words: disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.  While it may or may not hold up in court, it puts your client on notice that the info on your report is only as good as the info that's on record.

One of our counties, Blair county, PA doesn't even maintain an in-house tax claim bureau anymore.  All delinquent taxes are handled by a company called XSPAND.  When we do a search in that jurisdiction, we make a note that the information on the report was obtained from XSPAND.  You may want to start making a note of the person's name with whom you spoke and writing down the date and time.  That way, when a client sees that you have all your ducks in a row, they may back off.

As far as your first question, I wouldn't accept responsibility for anything of record outside the time period covered by the search.  You may want to simply list the phone number of the municipality on future searches, or in the alternative, let your clients know that you cannot be held responsible for information obtained from third-party sources.

Hope this helps.  Good luck to you.

Regards,
Scott L. Perry, President
Jireh Business Information Solutions, Inc.
SOT ID #1629