A recent local news item provides the perfect illustration of why the proper evidencing and reporting of title to real estate interests is so important to our fundamental rights as well as to our regional and national economies.
A local businessman is filing suit against Allegheny County, PA, claiming that the county is denying him the right to remove about 700,000 tons of coal that he owns. 74-year-old Nello Fiore, of Whitehall, PA says that if the county won't let him mine the coal, then they should pay him for the value of the coal, which lies beneath 92 wooded acres in the Sleepy Hollow section of the county's South Park, located just south of Pittsburgh. The high-quality coal, which sells for about $143 per ton locally, could be worth well over of $100 million, according to Attorney Thomas W. King, who represents Mr. Fiore.
Southwestern Pennsylvania, which lies in the heart of the Appalachian Basin, has often been referred to the "Saudi Arabia of Coal". In fact, coal mining has been a mainstay of our region's economy since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Because of this, Pennsylvania real estate law recognizes surface and subsurface interests separately. Typically, when someone purchases a parcel of real estate in Pennsylvania, only the surface interest is conveyed unless the mineral or subsurface interest is specifically mentioned in the deed. (See my previous blog entry, Searching Mineral Interests: Don't Try This at Home.)
The county, to which the surface interest in the land was donated in the 1930s, considered a proposal to strip mine the coal at a community meeting this past June, which was attended by about 300 people, including Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. Mr. Onorato nixed the plan after it was discovered that a 2001 County Parks Master Plan designates the area as "an important biological zone" which has also been recommended for designation as an Open Space Reserve.
Mr. Fiore's lawsuit alleges that the county is acting unlawfully in preventing him from removing the coal, which he inherited from his brother, who purchased it from Consolidation Coal Co., the predecessor to Consol Energy. According to Attorney King, the deed gives Mr. Fiore the right to mine the coal at any time, regardless of who owns the surface interest. "If the county will continue to tell us we can't mine the coal, Mr. Fiore, under the Pennsylvania Constitution has a right to be paid for it." Mr. Fiore and his attorney claim that to deny his mining rights amounts to the county exercising eminent domain over his coal, thus he is entitled to reimbursement.
The county says that it's not preventing Mr. Fiore from mining his coal because he can still retrieve it by underground mining. "He has access to his coal," says Kevin Evanto, a spokesman for the County Executive's office, "[the county] is just saying that we're not willing to allow you to destroy 91 acres of park land to get at it." However, the lawsuit states that "the coal cannot be recovered by the deep-mining process." Attorney King says that Mr. Fiore has offered to include a post-mining reclamation plan for soccer and football practice fields and picnic facilities, as well as royalties to the county in excess of $1 million.
Several members of the County Council are on record as saying that they wouldn't support the proposal, which would be subject to review by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Local residents like Mary Franko have also expressed concern about what strip mining operations will do to their property values. Some nearby homes are located as little as 1,000 feet away from the proposed mining area. In an interview with a local television station, Ms. Franko said, "It's dangerous, dirty, and I don't know how they can possibly protect the perimeter when there's going to be blasting going on. I'm afraid that this is going to devastate our township. We're a small township. Our property values will absolutely diminish".
To be honest, I'm not really sure where I come down on this one. Mr. Fiore certainly does seem to be on firm legal ground here, (no pun intended) and if I was in his position, I'd probably move to assert my rights as well. On the other hand, if I was one of the residents of that area, I'm not sure I'd want someone coming in and "tearing up my back yard", regardless of any promises to improve the area afterward. One thing is for sure, the Court is going to have its work cut out for it in dealing with this issue. Let's just hope the abstractors who researched this thing knew what they were doing.
In the current market, we all do what we can to generate business for ourselves, and sometimes it's tempting to promise more than we can deliver. I believe that in the long run, however it can backfire when we are unable to deliver. A while back, I received a search request in an email from a client that went something like this:
Can we have both of these by Tuesday? Unless they are dirty searches, of course.
Attached were two 60-year title requests. Keep in mind, this request was sent after 5:00 PM on a Thursday afternoon, and I've just come in from being out in the field all day. Not wanting to make a promise I can't keep, I replied:
Hey, "Joe"! (not his real name)
Cutting it kind of close, but I'll do the best I can. I'll let you know if I run into any issues.
I figured this way, I had a little "wiggle room" in case one or both of these searches turns ugly. So, I get back to the office the following day to find this little missive in my "IN" box:
Scott,
Three full days should not be cutting it close. If you would like, I could find someone else to do my searches. I know that you don't go to Armstrong [county] everyday, but three days notice for a search should not be asking too much. Now I understand that some searches tend to be difficult and get more involved, but for the most part, three days should be more than ample time to complete a 60 year search.
Please let me know your thoughts on this, I have to have the information to my client within 4 days. Otherwise, the delay may cost me a client. This is not good for business, as you know. I hope that you can appreciate the situation that I am in, and try to work with me to achieve the goals of customer service that I have been requested to fulfill.
Thank you for your time,
"Joe Doe"
Well, I think to myself, this puts me in a fine mood on a Friday afternoon. After resisting the temptation to put a .45 round through my computer monitor and muttering a few choice references to "Joe's" questionable parentage under my breath, I replied thus:
Dear "Joe":
I must admit that I am taken somewhat aback by your response. Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate your business. What I don't appreciate is your tone or your threats. However, I shall take the occasion of your email to clarify a few points:
1) "Three full days should not be cutting it close."
When you originally approached me to engage my services, I informed you that the normal turnaround time for a 60 Year Title History is THREE-TO-FIVE BUSINESS DAYS. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, I have ALWAYS allowed ample time to complete ANY search, be it a Current Owner Search or a Sixty-Year Title History. At NO TIME will ANY deadline take precedence over a properly conducted and thorough search. I have worked too hard over the past six-and-a-half years at building my business' reputation and earning the trust of my clients to risk losing it all because of a shoddy search, hastily completed to accommodate one company's "rush" request.
2) "If you would like, I could find someone else to do my searches."
Do what you have to, "Joe", but don't think that threatening me is going to get me to move any faster. It is very unprofessional. My clients keep coming back to me because they know they can depend on me! I produce a good quality product--I don't HAVE to beg for work. I know of no other abstractor in southwest Pennsylvania who offers the level of Customer Service and support that I do. When you have a question about any of my work, all you have to do is pick up the phone and I am available. I am constantly hearing horror stories from my clients who have been "blown off" by title searchers who do this work "part-time" or as a "hobby". Let's also not forget, you looked me up, not the other way around. Someone else recommended me to you, so I must be doing something right.
3) "I know that you don't go to Armstrong everyday, but three days notice for a search should not be asking too much."
I'm a little confused here, "Joe". Has there ever been an issue with me getting your searches back to you in a timely manner? If so, this is the first I'm hearing of it. A review of your Account History shows that we have never taken more that four days to return one of your searches. Oh, and FYI, I am SINGLE-HANDEDLY covering 13, (count 'em, THIRTEEN) counties, sometimes working 12- and 14-hour days and an occasional weekend here and there, and am pretty darn proud of my track record of being able to turn my clients' work around in a timely manner.
4) "Now I understand that some searches tend to be difficult and get more involved, but for the most part, three days should be more than ample time to complete a 60 year search."
Speaking strictly from a title searcher's point of view, I do think that asking for TWO sixty year searches in three days' time is, in fact, "cutting it kind of close", particularly in light of the fact that I will not have three full days in which to complete these searches. If you wanted me to move your work to the front of the line, I do offer expedited service for a premium of $25.00 per search.
5) "Please let me know your thoughts on this, I have to have the information to my client within 4 days. Otherwise, the delay may cost me a client. This is not good for business, as you know. I hope that you can appreciate the situation that I am in, and try to work with me to achieve the goals of customer service that I have been requested to fulfill."
My twelve-plus years of experience in this business has taught me what can and cannot be done; it has also taught me that promising something to a customer that I don't think I can (or that I know full well I can't) deliver is not good for business, either. As I indicated, I'll do the best I can. Please let me know if that will be good enough. Please bear in mind when placing future orders that normal turnaround for 40- and 60-Year Title Histories "will be" THREE-TO-FIVE BUSINESS DAYS.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to clarify my position. If you wish to reach me for comment, my contact information is below.
Cordially, Scott L. Perry, President Jireh Business Information Solutions, Inc. 724.863.7270 FAX 734.863.7271 Mobile 724.640.0725 www.jbizinfo.com
I hear stories all the time from owners of firms who tell me that "so-and-so company promises they can turn a Current Owner around in 'x' time--can you match that?" Believe me, it's tempting to simply say "yes", but I truly don't think it's good practice to make promises without knowing whether or not I can deliver just to get business. I'd sooner be honest with myself and my clients and risk losing a deal than to compromise myself in that way.
I've got a mortgage to pay and a family to feed, in addition to the overhead I'm putting out just to keep the doors open. I'm taking work wherever I can find it, but I believe there is a God and that what goes around comes around. Jesus Christ said it best in Mark 8:36 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" I just can't compromise my integrity for the sake of a buck.
Realizing that this is not exactly a real-estate related post, I feel compelled to remind everyone (myself included) that Memorial Day is about more than just the "unofficial start of summer" or having the day off for a backyard barbeque. As we pause to reflect upon the sacrifices of our military men and women, we also need to remember those "unsung heroes", the families and loved ones who have "kept the home fires burning" while our nation fought for its freedom.
Not everyone who has served our country has worn a military uniform. Countless others have answered the call to duty right here on the homefront, keeping our boys on the front lines supplied with the food, clothing, tools and equipment they needed to fight the good fight for our beloved America.
Such were the men and women who served with the Manhattan Project. Begun in mid-1942 under the leadership of Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project was a top-secret joint military-civilian effort by the United States to develop an atomic weapon capable of bringing the war to a swift close. There were three sites which comprised the Manhattan Engineer District: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
My grandfather, Hallie Nolen Perry was a journeyman lineman for the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and was involved in the construction phase of the three main plants which were built to refine raw uranium ore into the fissionable material neccessary to produce the Atomic Bomb. He worked for various civilian contractors during that time, after which he was employed as Chief Fire Alarm Technician for the entire Oak Ridge reservation.
Wartime security at Oak Ridge was so tight that even those working on the project had no idea what they were building until after the war. All personnel, including townsite residents, were required to wear color-coded ID badges. Each color code gave the bearer access to specified areas within the project. My grandfather wore what was commonly referred to as a "rainbow" badge, which granted him unquestioned authority to access any building or facility on the reservation.
The work being undertaken at Oak Ridge was cloaked in such secrecy that residents of the surrounding communities could only guess at what was taking place right in their own back yard. A common saying of the time was, "Tons and tons of stuff goes in, but nothing ever comes out!"
On 6 August 1945, the nation and the world discovered the true purpose of the Manhattan Project. Two atomic bombs were dropped, first on Hiroshima, then three days later, Nagasaki, forcing the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on 15 August 1945.
This story is dedicated to the memory of my "Papaw" Perry and countless others like him who served in secrecy right here at home to assure our victory and to save the lives of untold thousands of American GI's. We must never forget the efforts and the service of these truly "unsung heroes" of our nation.
I've been meaning to give my review and commentary on an interesting piece from here in southwestern PA that came out a few weeks ago. Seems that a couple from Franklin Park, PA, (a suburb just north of Pittsburgh) has filed suit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court against Google, Inc., alleging that pictures which appeared on the Street View feature of the Internet giant's mapping function violated their privacy, according to a story from the AP.
Google obtains its "Street View" photos utilizing still cameras mounted on passenger vehicles which drive around taking pictures from different angles, which are then digitally "sewn" together to create panoramic 360-degree views of cities, towns and neighborhoods. In their six-page complaint, plaintiffs Aaron and Christine Boring (swear I didn't make that up) allege that Google's "reckless conduct has exposed [the Borings'] private information to the public at large with the commensurate risks this entails". The complaint further states that Google's vehicle trespassed onto their property when it drove down a private right-of-way to snap pics of their house that included their swimming pool. The couple's attorney, Dennis Moskal says the Google vehicle came close enough to the pool "to hand them a drink."
Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in First Amendment and privacy law says that the case may have some merit, citing Daily Times-Democrat v. Graham, 162 So. 2d 474 (1964), an Alabama case in which a newspaper photographer had snapped a picture of a woman whose skirt had been blown over her head, á la Marilyn Monroe, in a carnival funhouse. Although the newspaper argued that it was justified in printing the photo because it was taken in a public place, the court ruled that the photo violated the woman's right to privacy. (In an interesting side note, Bankston has himself been captured by Google's cameras on more than one occasion and once was even observed smoking a cigarette outside his San Francisco office. He'd told his family he had kicked the habit.)
Perhaps the greatest irony here is that the Borings, in an attempt to enforce their right to privacy, may have unwittingly put themselves under the microscope, since much of the info about their home is readily available to anyone who logs onto the county's online Real Estate Assessment website. Not only that, but their home address is prominently displayed in the complaint, which can be obtained (for a fee) from the county's Department of Court Records website.
Google spokesman Larry Yu says that all the Borings had to do was to ask that the images be taken down. "We actually make it pretty easy for people to submit a request to us to remove the imagery." Not good enough, says Attorney Moskal, stating that simply removing the pics won't undo the damage or discourage Google from engaging in similar future conduct. "Isn't litigation the only way to change a big business' conduct with the public?" he asks, "What happened to their accountability?"
That's funny, I've been wondering the same thing about Big Title. A favorable ruling for the Borings may not set a precedent, but whatever the outcome, it's sure to have lasting implications in the debate over information vs. privacy.
While perusing some of the local online publications, I ran across this article by Ron DaParma, Real Estate Reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
The Pittsburgh region isn't at the top of the list of U.S. cities stung by mortgage foreclosures and problems with subprime loans, experts say.
Residential foreclosures here actually declined slightly in 2007 versus 2006, according to a recent report.
Mr. DaParma's article goes on to spotlight a couple of anecdotal instances of how folks are dealing with their own foreclosure worries, but there's also this article by Ben Semmes in The Pittsburgh Business Times:
A flood of foreclosures swamped the Pittsburgh region in February, which saw the most foreclosed homes in more than two decades.
Four hundred owners lost their homes in February in the five-county Pittsburgh region, 64 more than February of last year, according to RealSTATs, a South Side-based real estate information company.
In the 22 years since RealSTATs began keeping records, no one month has recorded more foreclosures than February's total.
These articles were written about 3 weeks apart from one another. Can they both be true? I suppose, but from where I sit, it's all a matter of perspective. Personally, I've always been a glass-half-full kind of guy, although I can see where it's easy to get discouraged when faced with the prospect of losing one's home. This isn't the first time this region has faced an economic downturn, however; we were hit hard by the decline of the steel industry in the late 70s and managed to come back from that. That's why I prefer to remain optimistic. The people of southwestern PA are a resilient lot. We never give up and always find a way to win.
The recent news that the passport files of the three presidential candidates, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have been accessed by contract employees of the State Department has brought the issue of information security and personal privacy to the public's attention. According to an AP report, passport files containing personal information about several "high-profile Americans", including the late Anna Nicole Smith, have been accessed on at least 20 separate occasions. Although the review of Ms. Smith's file appears to have come from a "legitimate" source, the report states,
"Supervisors recorded each instance a file was viewed because the applications in question belonged to members of a select group of several hundred citizens whose passport files were "flagged" for extra protection due to their visibility, the officials said. Among these people are government leaders, movie stars and athletes, the officials said.
The list maintained by Bureau of Consular Affairs has included as many as 500 people at any one time, they said. The list is kept secret partly to deter workers from making unauthorized inquiries into high-profile records. Although there are no formal criteria for inclusion, people on the list are deemed to warrant special consideration because of their public status, the officials said."
Don't you wish you warranted such "special consideration"? I guess if Joe Ordinary Citizen (read: all you peons out there) has all the details of his private life trotted out online on public record websites for the whole world to see by Big Title, the information industry and their willing accomplices within his local county government, it's no big deal; but when the passport records of three "high-profile Americans" (read: the ruling classes) are breached...oh, my word, that's just SHOCKING!
"It is a common misconception that easy access to public records has facilitated other types of fraud, identity theft, or land fraud."
That's the assertion set forth in a white paper authored by members of the Property Records Industry Association entitled, "Privacy and Public Land Records: Making Practical Policy". PRIA, a self-described membership-driven organization composed of business and government members of the property records industry, released the white paper in January 2006, which goes on to say that,
"[w]hile posting documents that contain certain key information on the Internet, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and signatures, can provide a criminal with some of the information needed to commit identity fraud or theft, there is no evidence to support any claim that this is systematically being done to perpetuate identity theft crimes. There are many easier, and far more efficient, ways for identity thieves to obtain this information in today's world, as opposed to combing through public records and hoping to find something - a ‘needle in the haystack' approach."
I have to wonder just how much research PRIA did before reaching that conclusion, because it didn't take very much effort for me, a dumb ol' abstractor, to find numerous such instances doing a simple Google search. The rampant deed fraud in Florida and Texas that I blogged about recently must have escaped PRIA's notice. I wonder if they knew of the incident in December 2005 in Scottsdale, Arizona, in which a 23-year-old methamphetamine user showed police the method he used to steal identities. He logged onto a local county website and pulled up a divorce document which listed not only names, but addresses of the parties, bank account numbers and even scans of signatures. According to one report, the website contained thousands of such documents.
The Federal Trade Commission lists the top five states for identity theft as Arizona, Nevada, California, Texas and Colorado. The numbers from Arizona are double the national average, due in large measure to the decision of county officials to post public records on the Internet, according to a 2006 study by Javelin Strategy and Research, which states that one in six adults in that state has had their identity stolen within the past five years.
PRIA's white paper also argues that free access to sensitive information contained in public records is "actually a very effective weapon in combating identity fraud and theft", although it cites no direct evidence to support that claim.
"Commercial databases compiled using public records for identity authentication are routinely used to detect fraud, including credit card application fraud, insurance application fraud, and other types of fraud. Thus, efforts to restrict the collection and use of personal information contained in public records, though well intended, actually may hinder efforts to prevent identity theft by depriving businesses, government and law enforcement officials of valuable data that is used to authenticate identities and protect the public."
That's small consolation, I'm sure, to the family of Amy Lynn Boyer, a New Hampshire college senior who was stalked and murdered in 1999 by an obsessed former classmate who purchased her Social Security Number and other personal information from an online data broker. Or the 145,000 Americans whose personal information was stolen from data giant ChoicePoint by criminals who set up fake company accounts and downloaded sensitive information compiled from public and private records.
So, as the Internet increasingly becomes a haven for fraudsters, cyberstalkers and identity thieves, organizations like PRIA continue to assure us that that's "just a common misconception" and that free access to online public records actually helps to fight cybercrimes.
As a result of the efforts of ActiveRain All-Stars like Ed Rybczynski, Fran "the Title Man" Gaspari and Lenn Harley, AR members and visitors are being made aware of the risks that real estate buyers are being exposed to by Big Title's ever-increasing reliance on offshore "thin" title plants and online public records. I defer to Lenn's wealth of expertise in the real estate industry, whose statement in an earlier blog post summed things up better than I ever could have: "The title search is one of the most important transactions involved in buying a home. It's isn't the place to begin an economy drive."
I always say that a title policy is only as good as the search that was relied upon to issue it, and by extension, the search is only as good as the abstractor who prepared it. In today's business climate, with real estate fraud and forclosures at all-time highs, it's important to know who you're working with. Real estate agents and brokers need to start asking the right questions of the lenders and title agents with whom they do business. Do their abstract vendors/providers use "hands-on" abstractors with "boots on the ground" and an intimate knowledge the intricacies of local indexing systems (which vary greatly, even from county to county)? Do they have a point-of-contact to verify questionable items when necessary?? Is the title agent issuing policies on "short searches" or do they insist on having a full 40- or 60-year title search which has been reviewed by a qualified title examiner or attorney? Are they putting your consumer at undue risk just to save a couple hundred bucks?
Founded in 2001, our company has established itself as southwestern Pennsylvania's premier provider of title abstracting, court-related services and paralegal support to the legal, financial, real estate and insurance industries. As a fan of David Letterman, I've compiled a "Top Ten" list of reasons to choose us for your search and abstract needs in southwestern Pennsylvania:
10) Direct coverage of thirteen southwestern Pennsylvania counties, more than any regional competitor;
9) Offering all types of search services, from Document Recovery to Current Owner Reports to Full Title Histories;
8) All work performed "hands-on" by a local abstractor within the four walls of the courthouse--no online searches or offshore processing;
7) Over ten years of search and abstract experience;
6) Typewritten search reports delivered in a concise, easy-to-read format;
5) All Real-T-SMARTTM Search Products backed by a $1M Errors & Omissions policy;
4) Computerized monthly invoicing streamlines recordkeeping and reduces paperwork;
3) Competitive all-inclusive pricing and generous volume discounts add up to exceptional value;
2) Flexible Billing Date option enables customers to better plan their monthly cash flow;
AND THE #1 REASON TO CHOOSE JIREH BUSINESS INFORMATION SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR SEARCH & ABSTRACT NEEDS IN SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA:
It used to be that if you wanted to obtain a copy of the deed to your house, you had to make a trip to your local courthouse, enlist the aid of a clerk in the Recorder of Deeds' office to assist you in searching through those old, dusty canvas books, find your name in the index, have them pull the correct book or microfilm, then wait while they made your copy for you. It was an inconvenient and often time-consuming process. However, the advent of the Internet and the availability of public records for worldwide consumption have changed all that.
Fast-forward to today, where, with just a few mouse clicks, not only can you quickly and easily download and print your own deed from your county's website, but while you're there, you can find out how much your neighbor paid for his home, who holds his mortgage and the size and dimensions of his lot. You can also find out how much he pays in property taxes and in some cases, you can even get pictures of his house...and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even mentioned the civil and family court records--which may contain volumes of sensitive and personal information about him or his family.
A February 2006 investigative report by David Bloys, publisher of the online newsletter News For Public Officials, details how fraudsters were able to fake a signature and a notary seal to produce a bogus deed transferring ownership of a house from a Denton county couple to themselves. The theft had the earmarks of a rash of deed fraud in Florida in which the signatures and notary seals of deeds to properties belonging to absentee owners were copied from public record websites. Commenting on the need for legislation to combat the fraud, Florida state Senator Dave Aronberg stated, "it's one thing if these guys are committing crimes; It's another thing if the state is facilitating it. The state shouldn't be making it easy for this kind of thing to go on."
In February 2007, MSNBC Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers broke the story of an Ohio woman whose identity was stolen by a ring of thieves who obtained her sensitive personal information from a county court database. Details such as her name, date of birth, address and social security number were there for the taking-everything the thieves needed to open accounts and make hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of purchases and charges using her identity. MSNBC later reported that New York State had removed documents from its Department of State website that showed the personal information of such celebrities as Donald Trump and Joe Namath, as well as many private citizens, in reponse to Myers' report.
Since the founding of our nation, citizen access to government records has been an integral part of promoting transparency and accountability in government. As those records have become available through electronic means, civil libertarians have made the argument that since land records and records of court proceedings are considered "public", they should be accessible by the most modern methods available. So the paramount question is: do I, a private citizen sitting here in my pajamas in front of my computer in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania (or anyone else, for that matter) have any business knowing what someone in, say Fort Worth, Texas for example, paid for their house? Internet librarian Dan Giancaterino doesn't think so.
Speaking as a guest on the Michael Smerconish radio show in October 2005, Mr. Giancaterino said, "I think that having that practical barrier of having to show up [at the courthouse] and go through the process of...requesting documents tends to weed out a certain percentage of crazies". He then went on to cite an example of information in a child custody case that he was able to pull from the website of a county near Philadelphia. He had the child's name and birth date; the mother's address; the fact that the father had been incarcerated and was being evaluated for a mental disorder; that the mother was pregnant with another man's child; the city and state to which the mother and child were moving; and even the name of the elementary school that the child would be attending.
A few years back, I attended a seminar at a technology forum sponsored by the Pennsylvania Land Title Institute (PLTI) which dealt with this very issue. I remember one of the speakers, a real estate attorney, informing us that while the individual pieces of information by themselves are "public" in nature, they become "private" once assembled into a narrative report or an abstract of information relating to a specific person or parcel of real estate. This is what is known as the doctrine of practical obscurity.
This little-known legal theory basically states that although a piece of information may be publicly accessible, the fact that no one with more than a casual interest would go to the trouble of looking it up makes it, for all practical purposes, obscure. The doctrine of practical obscurity was first advanced in a landmark case entitled US Department of Justice, et al. v. Reporters Committee, et al., 489 US 749 (1989) in which a reporter made a request under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for access to the FBI "rap sheets" of criminals. The Supreme Court held that although an individual's arrest records are available for public inspection in the respective courthouses, the doctrine of practical obscurity would make the compilation of such records an invasion of an individual's right to privacy. "[T]he common law and the literal understandings of privacy encompass the individual's control of information concerning his or her person."
Some states have already passed legislation addressing privacy issues with regard to public record data. The state of Florida, for example, has had an electronic redaction program in effect since 2006. Many local jurisdictions are taking similar measures. The County Council in Allegheny county, PA voted in November 2007 to eliminate the name search function from the county's online real estate assessment website. The names of roughly 100 judges were removed from that county's website in June 2005 after the murder of the mother and the husband of a federal judge in Illinois and the killing of a county judge in Atlanta, GA.
I'm usually the last guy to recommend government solutions to problems, but taxpaying citizens of local governments have the right to expect that their elected officials will take positive action in protecting their privacy as the barriers of the practical obscurity of our public records become increasingly eroded by advancing technology.
OK, so this isn't exactly real estate or title-related. Humor me. Today, I was reading this blog on the science website dailytech.com that confirmed what I've suspected all along: that solar activity has more to do with global climate change than human activity. It just doesn't make sense--on one hand, we're told, in the grand scheme of things, that man is insignificant, nothing but the tiniest piece of flotsam on the ocean of the cosmos. Yet, at the same time, human arrogance allows us to think that we are powerful enough to wreck the earth's climate. We've been hearing for years that we're spewing so much CO2 into the atmosphere that we're going to cook ourselves to death because of global warming. Now, comes the news that there's more evidence of global cooling than global warming.
I believe that the underlying purpose of the global warming hysteria is to restrain economic freedom by limiting activities that produce carbon emissions, which encompasses just about everything we humans do as we go about our daily lives. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; the earth actually gets greener in the presence of increased CO2, and in fact, we have more trees now than we did when the country was founded over 200 years ago.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't practice good stewardship, but I certainly don't believe that fossil fuels are destroying the world. I, for one, am proud to live in one of the only industrialized nations on earth that generates enough wealth to clean up after itself.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
;)
;)
