Court Report

An insured filed suit against its title insurer, seeking to recover damages due to its lack of right to access an enclosed parcel of land covered by the title policy. It filed suit after the adjoining homeowners’ association obtained an injunction preventing the insured from constructing a road through one lot of the enclosed parcel. Read on for more details.

A property owner filed suit against its lender, demanding a statutory penalty of $1.025 million for allegedly failing to timely file a mortgage satisfaction piece. After a trial court granted the lender’s motion for summary judgment, the property owner appealed. Read on for more details.

A title insurer filed suit against gold coin retailers that sold gold coins to identity thieves who had obtained a $2 million refinance loan on real property. The title insurer was seeking to recover the loan proceeds after paying out the lender’s title insurance claim. Read on for more details.

Nathan E. Hardwick IV, former LandCastle Title LLC CEO, was ordered to pay $40.3 million in restitution to victims of his scheme to defraud his law firm out of millions of dollars. Previously he was found guilty at trial of wire fraud, conspiracy and making false statements to a federally insured financial institution and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Read on for more details.

After the bank that is successor in interest to a set of mortgages under a mortgage backed security foreclosed on one of the mortgages purportedly in that security, the owners of the property questioned the validity of the assignment and therefore the bank’s right to foreclose. Read on for more details.

In a 3-1 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed with MERSCORP and the Third Circuit in ruling that the state’s conveyance statute does not require that all conveyances must be recorded. Read on for a history of the case and the court’s reasoning.

Though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently held that the state’s conveyance statute does not require that all conveyances be recorded, one of the four justices that ruled on the case had strong opinions to the contrary. Read on for insight from the judge’s lengthy dissent.

As it awaits a new trial on three counts against a title insurer regarding four underlying fraudulent transactions, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for an order directing entry of a final judgment on one of the counts, for breach of contract. Read on for more details.

The owners of property that was short-sold and reacquired filed a claim on a lender policy allegedly showing no liens on the property. The bank and title companies to the policy argued the owners’ claim was barred by the statute of limitations because they had constructive notice of the second lien prior to the short sale, even though they claimed not to have title to the property or actual knowledge of the second lien until they went to sell the property. Read on for the court’s decision.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the cases of five plaintiffs who alleged that lenders participated in kickback schemes with Genuine Title between 2009 and 2014. The district court had dismissed the claims, however, because the first of the five class actions was not filed until after the expiration of RESPA’s one-year statute of limitations. Read on for more details.