This simply re-confirms my earlier belief that the title companies and VM's are more interested in the bottom line of the balance sheet than in the accuracy of the title search. The debate of the accuracy of online and non- online data based disc searches has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum. I will not beat it to death any further, but I wanted to disclose an interesting experience I had yesterday with the inaccuracy of on line searches. Connecticut has only two cities currently on line with respect to there land records, Norwich and Stamford. I did a search yesterday in Norwich. I normally do the initial search of the written records, and check the computer to verify conformity.  One of the documents showing up in the index (both written and computer) was a release of mortgage. The margin notation also indicated that this was a release. In reality it was an assignment..not a release. The mortgage was still active. You had to check the actual document to determine the nature as an assignment.

Norwich markets its system for fee. Supposedly you are able to perform a title search from your office. The system does allow you to image each of the documents, and imaging the assignment on the computer would have disclosed its nature as an assignment rather than a release also. My concern is with the search being performed on the otherside of the world, is the third world "abstractor" going to know enough to examine the documents or simply to rely on an inaccurate index? India has a legal system influenced by an English system of justice, like ours, but it is also shaped by the Indian experience. Is the third world"abstractor" going to understand the impact on title of each of the documents in the land records? What happens if the search is done in China whose "legal system" is totally alien to ours?

Connecticut will probably never go completely on line because the tax bases of the smaller towns will not justify the expense. However, the other alternative is the system marketed by data brokers as a non online system of computerized discs. The problem is the lag time between update discs.
Several years ago there was a company that was offering the same type of system for computerized legal research. Their selling point was that it saved you a trip to the law library to perform research. It updated the data base of case law 4 times per year. The problem was that it did not save you the trouble of going to the law library because the update discs did not come out fast enough to include the most recent law in your research. The same is true of the land records discs marketed by the data brokers. The problem is probably even more severe because the land records are updated on an hourly basis.

Ultimately, the title companies will make money, and look for someone at which to point the finger when the title insurance claims begin. The title insurance companies will construe the policies as narrowly as possibly to deny coverage to the homeowner, and the homeowner will become low man on the totem pole with respect to marketability of his title.